by Lesa Seibert, President, Xstreme Media
How do I approach a web site for my business or organization? Do I really need to plan?
The answers are yes and yes. The first step in building a new web site or to overhaul and existing site is to put together a plan for the site. You must begin by identifying your business goals, who your target audience is and what message you want to convey. If you don't have a focus, you are playing roulette with your time, resources and money - you may or may not land where you want.Steps in Planning for a Web Site
- The first consideration is what do you want to achieve with the web site. Is it to provide information, sell products, get new members? You must have a goal(s) in mind for your site in order for it to provide the returns you expect to get. Assign a person on your staff to gather the information needed for your site and to work with the designer.
- The second objective is to determine who is your target market and what message you want to provide to them. Is there a call to action once you get them there? Your site visitors have multiple roles and you need to make sure you address all of them. For example, a plumbing supply company can have the following potential visitor roles: retail customers, plumbing contractors, wholesale buyers and real estate developers. So, the site for this company needs to provide something for each of those target visitors.
- Next is usability. Now that you have them there is it quick and easy for them to find what they want? No matter how visually appealing your web site is, if visitors can't get to the information/products they want quickly and easily you will lose them and it will be very hard to get them back. The end goal for a visitor must be met within 3 to 5 seconds. Is your navigation and call to action intuitive? Remember your site visitors may or not be as computer savvy as you are, and you must design for the least common denominator.
- Once this is defined then you can move on to content. Making sure you are providing all of the information your visitors would want in an easy to read, streamlined format. Visitors are more than likely not going to spend the time to read paragraphs of content. Summarize your content, including lots of key words, so it is a quick read. Also incorporating SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is becoming more and more viable if you want to be found once it is built or updated. Just because you build it does not mean they will come.
