Determining the Purpose of Your Website
When I first meet with a client, one of the things we do is
attempt to determine the purpose of their website. On a website
planning worksheet we use, there is a list of purposes many
websites have in common. The client goes through the list and
ranks the items in order of importance. So the most important
item will be 1, and there will only be one item labelled with a
1.
Here are the items in that list:
- To gain a favorable impression of the company or organization.
- To develop a qualified list of prospects
- To sell products directly taking credit card information over
the Internet
- To encourage potential customers to contact us by phone or
mail to consummate a sale
- To make available product information and price lists to
distributors
- To make available product information and price lists to
customers
- To strengthen brand identification
Another good idea is to come up with a succinct mission
statement for your site. You might even come up with one for
your eyes only, then one that can be used as a tagline of sorts
on your site.
One of our clients, The Christian Chronicle, has a good example.
Their tagline on their site is "An international news source for
members of churches of Christ." They've identified not only what
the site is all about, but even the target audience for the
site. An internal mission statement for the Chronicle might be
"Provide impartial reporting of news relevant to members of the
churches of Christ."
Whatever the case, a website should never be created just to
create a website. It should some purpose, whether that purpose
is just for fun or to make money. Establish that mission for
your site and then work to fulfill it.