Real World Computing

In this case, you need to think about how you can minimise the risk the client feels in using your service, and one way to do this is my second key feature: the testimonial. People like to feel they're making the same choice as other people, as it validates their selection, and this is just as important in business-to-business transactions as it is when selling retail. You should set up a standard process for gathering feedback: listen to the negative and proclaim the positive. For some reason, many companies find it hard to ask their business clients for testimonials, but in my experience most clients are only too happy to give an honest appraisal if you only ask them.

Third, if at all possible, you should enrol in a consumer-protection scheme such as SafeBuy, which costs very little, involves almost no work on your part and serves to reassure your customers. And, finally, don't underestimate the power of audiovisual presentations. Walkthroughs are a very powerful way of demonstrating how a paid-for service works, particularly if they're accompanied by a voiceover. This is one of those rare occasions when you don't have to use a professional voiceover artist, because it sounds much more authentic coming from someone who's actually worked on the site.

Test, test, test

Once your web application or site is up and running, it's essential not to ease up. The first iteration of your site isn't going to hit the mark perfectly, so you'll need to spend time using tools like Google Analytics and those included with Adwords to analyse the behaviour of people visiting the site. In the week after launching passyourcitizenship.co.uk, I spent a lot of time analysing and amending the site, with quite significant changes that included modifying the address page as mentioned above, changing the email activation process and altering both graphics and copy. At the same time, I was testing Adwords adverts, split testing, moving popular keywords into their own groups and adjusting the bid price per click. The level of these changes becomes smaller and smaller over time as you get closer to the optimum settings, at which point you can back off a little and optimise perhaps just once a week.

Always be on the lookout for improvements, and the best source of suggestions is your customer base. It can be terribly hard to respond positively to some negative comments, but you ignore them at your peril: the 1% that make the effort to email you are representative of a far greater proportion of your total customers.

Keep an eye on your competitors, watch their pricing, promotions and Adwords campaigns. The really good news is that most of them won't bother to work hard on their marketing because for most companies - even those for whom the web is crucial - their website and marketing are merely necessary evils to be finished and then left to run themselves. If you're one of that minority who constantly work to improve both their site and its marketing, you'll have a huge advantage. Given a good- quality product, the key to its success is marketing: "Build it and they will come" is so 20th century!

A tale of two hosts

It's a sad fact that not all dedicated server hosts are created equal. You get what you pay for up to a point, but that doesn't necessarily mean that paying a lot will guarantee good service. For those of us involved in web development, a solid, dedicated server with excellent support is an absolute essential. When we launched passyourtheory.co.uk, we invested in a good-quality server with a hardware firewall and daily backups. We chose DediPower (www.dedipower.com), based in Reading, for no special reason at the time, but, having since had experience of other providers, I'm glad we did.

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