You don't have to have a Blue Nile type of website to be considered a genuine business. Nor do you have to have an online store/shopping cart. You do however, have to relay to customers a sense of who you are, how they can contact you, where you are located and the brands you carry...and yes, you do need a website. A recent study showed eighty percent of urban shoppers now say that they don't consider a business legitimate unless it has a website.
 
When it comes to designing your website, don't make your store and website two completely different entities. If you are charming and elegant in the store don't be sterile on the internet. If you are hip hop, b-boy and trendy on the website then be that when they walk into the store.

 
When thinking about organizing a website, think about how it’s going to be used. Update the website’s looks about every eighteen months to two years as trends change. Of course, never lose that style that is distinctly yours. Honestly, most visitors to your website will only visit the website while they are either collecting initial information about your company or confirming information they heard in your store. So don’t make that information hard to find.

Also, since many wholesalers offer inventory applications for use on your website, (Did you know Crown Diamond was the first?) make sure your pricing structures match. We had a customer who told their client one price in the store and when the customer went online to look at the stone details after they left the store, they found it was $2,200.00 less expensive on the website. Ooops! Their pricing structure now matches. Remember, your website is the virtual extension of your store that people can visit 24/7.

Here are some other do’s and don’ts for you website.

1. If you are active on Twitter, Facebook, My Space, Linked-In, etc, make sure you put links on your page so people can connect with you.
2. Make sure a Contact Us is prominent on each page. It is amazing how many people treat contact us as part of the small legal jargon at the bottom of their pages. That’s great if you are an online community but terrible if you really want people to contact you.
3. Staff pictures make a difference. It’s amazing how excited someone can get if they see your photo on the website and then see you in the store. It’s like they have already made a personal connection with you by seeing a picture of your face.
4. Don’t take pictures in the back room in poor lighting. I know those bench guys love their benches but I have yet to see a bench shot that looks decent, much less great. You don’t have to pay a photographer to get great pictures although it’s probably worth the investment. Photographers are hungry too! But if you can’t find a place to grab a good shot in the store (and if you can’t then maybe you should consider a redesign) then take everyone to a park. Flowers, green and water make great welcoming pictures.
5. Don’t have a huge flash image on the front page with no other navigation options. Some PDA’s can not download flash and browsers can always get hung up on them no matter how good your designer is. If you don’t have anything else other than flash on your website then you may have just lost someone heading to your store.
6. Don’t be afraid to ask a lot of questions when you meet with your web designer and if he or she doesn’t show a good organizational structure for the website then don’t use them. Also, make sure you understand how staff can make quick updates themselves. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to ask web designers to make a 15 minute change that ends up taking four weeks to do it.

Your website can evolve into a destination but we’ll cover that in another blog. But hopefully you have enough here to move forward with a redesign or make some adjustments to your current website.