Website Planning Guide: What Are Your Site Objectives?
This section is your website planning guide, and aims to focus you on an important topic: your business website objectives. Don't get distracted by all the features and approaches. Keep your focus on reaching your website objectives, and on making an effective website for your audience.
Website Planning Guide Summary
·
Determine your website's objectives· With your objectives/goals, assess your alternatives
· Create a plan: evaluate and revise for time and budget
You may be excited and ready to jump in and start making your own business website...but I strongly recommend that you first take a step back and think about why you want to create a website in the first place.
Take
the time now to
evaluate your website goals:
·
Are you looking
to expand your offline business?
· Start a new online business?
· Indulge in your hobbies online and make some income, too
The goals and objectives you set for your website will guide you to the best strategies to accomplish them. Is your website acting as a simple online brochure to supplement your current advertising? Or is your site's main objective to bring in new business leads through an online form or newsletter/ezine?
With your clear objectives in mind, you can better determine which direction you want to go with your website...
For example, if you want to expand your offline business to the web in order to build relationships with new customers and maximize income, then you can plan the relevant strategies and tactics to get there.
In the above scenario, you might decide that the best way to attract new customers online is to build credibility with them and provide them with free, quality information about your services on your website. Since you know that your goal is relationship building that leads to increased business...
... well, that clear direction and purpose will be a big asset in your decision-making!
Create your plan ...
After you have thought about your ultimate goals for your website, and listed some alternative strategies and tactics, it’s time to put it all together.
In choosing the best approaches for your website, you should be realistic and consider your limitations and strengths. Are any marketing or maintenance tasks particularly time-consuming for you? Will one or more of your ideas cost too much to implement?
In other words, it’s not enough to think that a website feature is cool or fun to try. Perhaps your site's audience will not benefit from an advanced new feature or database ... so prioritize what you really need.
After carefully considering the time and money considerations AND how effective the tactic would be in reaching your goals, then you can “work smart” and prioritize what features you should include on your website.
This website planning guide is just that -- a guide. Your own business website objectives will be unique and personal to you, and depends on your own business goals.
Next, as part of your website planning process, you should think about how you will develop your website content.
And at this time, you should also be thinking about how you can make money from your website -- although the monetization of your site comes much later and only AFTER your website is established and doing well with regular traffic.
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