subject: What do you want your website to do for your business? [print this page] What do you want your website to do for your business?
Your Website Goal
What do you want your website to do for your business?
This is a very personal question but a very important one. Many local business website owners don't have a good answer to this very basic but very vital question. So why is this so important? It comes down to knowing what your desired result is. We all know that it is important to have goals. Whether they be in our businesses, in our personal lives, or in our financial lives we know they are important. We probably even know that it is important to have those goals written down some place so that we see them clearly and often. How many of us actually have them written down?
Since a website is part of your current business or your business plan, it is extrememly important to have goals and specifically one primary goal. Is your main goal to make more sales (e-store), or build your list of prospects (lead capture site), maintain open lines of communication with your prospects and customers (blog), or something else entirely? There isn't one correct answer for every site.
You may think that you have many goals that you need to focus on but I propose there should be only ONE. It is very important that you understand what you want to accomplish with your site. Think about it this way, If you don't know what you want a visitor to do while visiting your site how clear will it be to them? If it isn't clear to them will they ever help you reach your goal?
What if you can't narrow down to one goal? I say write them all down and get to work figuring out which one is the ONE. For example, take your list and prioritize it. Number the goals how you think they rank. Then cover up all but number one and ask yourself "If my site did this and only this one thing would it still be valuable to me?" If the answer is yes you may have found your goal. If the answer is no try to reorganize the list. Once you find the correct number one item you should have your goal. Congratulations, you are ahead of many business owners I know.
Make sure you write down your goal. It can be many places but it needs to be visible, hopefully every day and better yet many times a day so you are reminded of it often. I don't know why exactly this works but trust me, you need to write it down.
Knowing your goal is a great place to start. It is also a great place to come back to if you get lost in all the whiz bang bells and whistles that are out there online today. Take your goal and move forward by either building a site to help you achieve your goal or re-tool your Internet Marketing strategy to help you reach your goal. Good luck.
