"The best thing that you can before building your website is to know your competitors"
Just like you cannot start a business without thorough research, enough market analysis and competitor analysis, you cannot start a website too without the same kind of study.
Imagine you open a shop in a busy market in a busy street. Do you think without any name for the shop, offers, banners, discounts, promotions and advertisements, you will be able to make it? Well, not at all, because shops that were there before you and dealing with the same products would already have their market created which you will have to cut through to make your place. And this exact same thing happens with a website too.
When you have a website, the planning to create a place for it starts the mind of users from the very concept of the site.
Who will do the research?
Before asking who will do this research for you, the question would actually be who will handle promotion of your site after it’s ready for use. That’s because those who would be handling the site promotion would actually be handling the research too. In fact, without understanding the history, you cannot plan the future. And similarly, without understanding the rivalry and competition in the market, no website designer, developer, SEO and marketing expert can plan for the future promotions and designs of the site. Therefore, naturally the best team or professionals to do this kind of research on your behalf would be those who would take charge of site design and promotions in the future.
The changing trend in web design and SEO
The trend of designing and promotion in case of websites has changed quite a lot in the last two decades. Once upon a time, the whole thing was done in plain two parts. The first part consisted of plain designing and developing of a website, and then in the next part, after the site was fully ready and functional, the promotion and SEO part was started by the same or another team.
Normally, different teams worked on this, one for the design and development, while one for the promotion. And even during promotion and SEO too, the content development part was done by another team in many cases.
Now with time, all of these things have gone mixed up, and the services have become fused. It’s because of the demand of the changing trend that has made the designer think about site promotion even before designing a site, and the developer thinks of SEO right from developing the site elements and placing the content. Again the work of the SEO workers gets simplified and easy when they get the support of an SEO friendly design and content from the developers.
Therefore, from website designing to promotion – all have come up wrapped under the same banner or team. One who takes it, carries on all the needed work to create a site to be ready, functional, and promotion friendly.
Let the web design or SEO specialist make the report for you
The best way to start with the research is to talk to a company who would be designing your site, as well as making content for it, and then later would be taking the job of promoting it too by marketing and SEO. The best thing would be to do this research too.
Here, you must know that as a part of the welcome offer or even before presenting you with the quote for the services, reputed services do give you such research report. This kind of presentation and report contains all such details, which you would like to know as you launch your site. Here you would get competitor details, market analysis and everything that will tell you how tough or easy your path is going to be ahead in e-commerce or simply making your place online.
By getting these reports from a few services, you will have a nice idea of who to pick and go with.
Talk to the design and SEO Company about your concerns
While getting one such report from an SEO service provider, do talk to them about your concerns too. Before starting it with a website, you must know your chances, options, and limitations. And a good case study and market analysis report will help you understand that only. Therefore you must talk on the basis of that report to the team who gave you the report. And then you can further discuss things to give shape to your project.
The best thing that you can before building your website is to know your competitors. This would also help you think of other things you could work on to make the site and make your online business stand out. You can leave these kinds of things to the experienced, like Milwaukee SEO specialist.
A poorly performing website
If you already have a website online, which is not getting a good response as you wanted for it, and you believe it needs some redesigning and twist in SEO and marketing, then also you should get its market analysis and research done freshly by an SEO team. This will help you analyze the weak points of the site, and will help you gauge where and how the site can be improved to make through the competition. A poorly performing website can be totally redesigned and promoted with new zeal to get great results when you have the research about the market complete with you.
Finally
Research will open new vision, help you think freshly and generate better ideas. Hence, whether you are working on a new site, or trying to revamp an old site, you must get proper research done, to realize the competition against it.
About the Author: Sujain Thomas
Sujain is an experienced blogger who has written articles for several renowned blogs and websites about various uses of social media to engineer more business traffic on business websites.
