Website presentation - what to include?

D Hayes

I'm giving a presentation to small business owners on website design and how to incorporate websites into their businesses. The audience will be typical small business owners - ranging from those who may have websites to those that may be computer illiterate. The presentation will be approximately 1.5 - 2 hours.

I'm trying to put together a presentation that strikes a balance between the people who have websites and those that don't have much technical knowledge.

So far, the general structure of the presentation is as follows:

- The benefits of having a website
- DIY websites - for those who want to do it themselves, bit about software, hosting etc.
- Different types of websites - brochure, CMS, e-commerce
- Costs involved
- Optimizing websites

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd like to hear them.

Also, any useful links would be great.

Thanks in advance.

ocallagh

Those headings you have look good. Some more:

How to hire a developer/company
How to check their portfolio and the process which ensues from draft through to sign off.
Security
Online payment options (Paypal, Realex etc)
Merchant Accounts

Also, I'd split the presentation up into three parts, starting with Business and then leading into Technical and finishing with a summary.

In the technical part, refer back to key points you raised in the business part to keep them interested.

ocallagh

Just thinking about it, splitting up the entire thing into two parts is a bit much.

You could do each main heading in two parts, Business then Technical. For each heading start with a term they are familiar with and then get into the technical. eg:

Marketing >> SEO

I'm doing something similar myself so will be interested to hear other's thoughts

D Hayes

Great advice, thanks ocallagh. One thing I'm thinking of putting in is examples of good and bad design, e.g. good call to actions, good menu layout etc. Screenshots of good v bad.

Any further advice is appreciated, thanks.

tricky D

The perils of DIY. Web design, in reality, is a professional service with a huge skillset. Also there's the opportunity cost for businesses spending too much time getting their site in order, when they could be doing more productive things.

That said, there's the very significant caveat that so many web designers/solution providers just don't cut the mustard and figuring out if a they really can deliver is not easy. So ocallagh's how to choose a developer/company comes into play.

Engaging a mentor service or talking to someone who has already gone through what the business is going to do is also worth exploring if going DIY or even hiring a service provider.

Other matters worth a mention are the importance of getting a contract. That's just common sense but is too often skipped.

Some services also aren't well judged by portfolio alone. Some just aren't portfolio items eg. SEO/SEM which might be better judged by results.

Another thing worth a mention is that design is about how it works as opposed to how it looks, which is only a part of the design sphere.