Websites today can be significantly valuable asset if they are designed as a complete package. Complete Package you ask? Yes! There are multiple areas that have to be addressed before a site can truly do well and truely become a 24 hour a day sales tool. A ranking system that allows you to look at the overal value has been established as The Poosters Value Index (PVI).

Presentation and Functionality

The website should be clean, professioanl, no spelling mistakes and just overall look good. Colors are important as certain colors or backgrounds can become an anoyance and cause potential customers to move on to other sites. If it looks like it was done by your neice or nephew after taking their first html class then it is going to make the potential customer feel like they are dealing with a company that is unorganized and unproffesional. Yes, people do judge a book by it's cover and it could be their first introduction to your business so think about what you are presenting!

Optimization

The site should be optimized to load quickly. If it takes forever to load then most users will hit the little X in the right hand corner and move on to find another business. Waiting for things to load in this day and age is unexceptable. This can caused by designers using html to compress their graphics instead of creating thumbnails with a quality graphics program, huge amounts of flash, graphics or videos or just bad coding.

Overall Conversion

When your site is created you should understand what you want your site to do. It is very important to decide what is to be accomplished by the site. Do you want the user to call, buy a product, fill out a form, send an email, sign a petition or something else.

Search Rankings - You can build any style of website you want but people aren't going to magically show up. It is important to do all the right things to make the search engines want to give you high rankings and you should always follow their guidlines for proper design and coding.

Technical Design - When designing a site it is critical that you ensure your website is designed in accordance with the latest standards. Your website must also be designed to work with multiple browsers. This can be difficult as older browsers may not work with the newer standards and may have security holes.

Effortless Navigation

The website should be easy to find everything a client is looking for. A user should not have to search and search to find what your looking for. It should be effortless to find everything.

Return on Investment - What is the value of the website? Did it make you money? How are you tracking this? These are all the items that need to be considered and there are solutions for these. A website should be a 24 hour a day sales person.

• Leads Generated from website!
• Forms Submitted
• Phone Calls Generated
• Emails Submitted

Security and Infrastructure -

• If SSL is required is the certificate update and certified. (Credit Card - SSN and like classified data)
• Directories Protected from browsing
• Terms and Conditions
• Firewall Protection of site
• Backups done regularly of site
• Hosting Company -
  • Bandwidth to Internet
  • Quality Hosting Company
  • Server Quality