Building a website is a crucial step in establishing your online presence. However, before you start building your website, it’s important to ask yourself some key questions to ensure that your website meets your business needs and goals.
What is the main purpose of your business?
As a business owner, you may have a clear understanding of the main purpose of your business. However, it’s important to revisit this question when building a website. This is because your website is an extension of your business and should reflect your business goals and values.
By examining the main purpose of your business again, you can ensure that your website is designed to meet your business objectives and resonate with your target audience. For example, if your business is focused on providing eco-friendly products, your website should reflect this by using sustainable design elements and highlighting your commitment to sustainability.
What are the main goals of your website?
Understanding the main objectives of your website will be foundational to building a website fully optimised to achieving those goals. If your main objective is brand awareness, then the look, character and messaging will underpin the design of your site.
But If your main objective is to build a supportive community, while look, character and messaging will still have a role to play, a special focus on the customer journey – making it easy for and encouraging your audience to sign up to your membership package – will be the bedrock of the design.
Defining your website’s objectives will help you determine the type of content you need to create, the design elements you need to include, and the functionality you need to build.
Who is your target audience?
By understanding your target audience, you can create a website that resonates with them and meets their needs. This is important because it’ll help you to stand out from the competition and build a loyal customer base.
When designing your website, it’s important to consider your target audience’s preferences, interests, and needs. This will help you create a website that is tailored to their requirements.
For example, if your target audience is tech-savvy, you may want to include advanced features such as chatbots or interactive tools. On the other hand, if your target audience is less tech-savvy, you may want to focus on creating a simple and easy-to-use website.
Knowing your target audience will enable you to design a positive user experience and consider elements, such as online ordering, appointment scheduling, or customer support in a way that would best serve them.
How will you measure the success of your website?
For some owners of creative businesses, tracking data and performance could be the grey cloud in an otherwise blue sky. Some creatives feel that watching metrics will stifle their creativity and dull the business that begun out of love for the craft. But if you are going to reach your website goals, you need a way to track how the strategies you’ve put in place have performed.
Some of the metrics you could measure are:
- Website traffic: This metric measures the number of visitors to your website. It can help you determine whether your website is attracting the right audience and whether your marketing efforts are effective.
- Bounce rate: This metric measures the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate can indicate that your website is not engaging visitors or that your content is not relevant.
- Conversion rate: This metric measures the percentage of visitors who take a desired action on your website, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. A high conversion rate indicates that your website is effective in achieving your business objectives.
Measuring if your strategies are succeeding will mean that you’re not just stabbing in the dark when seeking to meet business goals but you have a clear idea of what is working.
Hopefully these questions help you to begin to think strategically about the place your website will serve in your business. You’re cultivating a spot that people will keep coming back to.
