What do you want your website to do?
One of the early tasks to perform when planning or designing a website is to decide what you want your website to do.
Typically when we get a client approach us, they have three questions in mind
- What will the website look like?
- How Much will a website cost?
- How long will the website take to make?
Which is understandable, we all want it to look nice, we want it as cheap as possible and we want it now!
However, in order to give you better answers to those questions, we need to know what you want your website to do.
Initially we need to know:
- Is it a new website?
- Is it an existing website that needs an update / new functionality?
- Do you need more traffic to your website?
- Do you need a better conversion rate for visitors to your website?
What are you trying to achieve with your website?
Deciding on what you want to achieve will help in deciding the type of website that you need.
Do you want your website to:
- Attract new customers – if you are an existing business you may have enough business from referrals, you may not need a website to generate more customers – you might want a website just to back up your reputation and offline marketing.
- Provide existing customers with information – a news feed, an events calendar, a Library of information / tips to support your products / services etc?
- Collect emails for your marketing
- Promote products and services
- A shopping cart for your products and services
- Get found in search engines for your keywords
- Provide a professional window to your business – to reinforce and consolidate your profile and reputation
- To be the go-to expert in your line of business
- Be a hub for all your marketing activities
Think about what your potential / existing customers want from your website?
When visitors come along do they want:
- Make it easy for them to contact you
- See what products / services you sell
- How can you help them with their problem
- To know when you are open for business
- How do they book
With answers to the above questions, we have a better idea of what your business and customers want, we can think about the website design and how these requirements can be met.
As the design develops, and after the website has been published these needs may change or need to be supplemented with others.
Conclusion
When you have a clearer vision of what you want your website to do, you’ll have a clearer idea on what you need to do and how much focus you need to give it, relative to other business tasks you have to do.
Answering the above questions will determine what you in turn have to do for your website. There is no such thing as a free lunch, similarly there is no such thing as a free business generating website. The above will help you decide on how much time and / or money you have to be put in to it.
Have a think about what you want your website to do and contact us and we can talk you though this important website planning process.
