What’s Your Website’s Mission? Clear Objective or Cloudy Obstruction?
There is something nagging about a company’s website. It is often the nemesis of many business owners. There is frequently no clear vision of what the website is intended to accomplish. Some CEO’s tell me “I don’t even know what is on our site.” Others report, “We need to change it,” or “We just changed it.” When I ask why, I hear “my marketing manager said it was time to change it,” or “we changed our brand/colors,” or “it simply needed updating.”
We often ask our clients and their teams what they think the purpose is of their website. We get a potpourri of replies:
- Reflect our brand
- Provide Information
- Sell our goods/services
- Employment Opportunities
- Educate
- Sign Up
- Get Leads
- Face of the company
- Collect prospect lists
- Gain credibility
- Share Our Team
- Share our history
It is true that we want our websites to be multifunctional. But the question is, what takes center stage? With searchers spending under 10 seconds on average at a site, what do you want to clearly convey? Is your site product or service focused? Does it look more like a catalog than a sales tool? Is it supposed to?
Most websites are intended to do three main things:
- Establish credibility (ever get sold to by someone without a website? Case closed. No chance.)
- Sell your products/services (perhaps directly on line, or at least hope you can convince visitors to fill out your “contact us” form)
- Develop leads from those seeking what you have to offer.
Some sites are so complicated, we leave because we feel like we failed at the N. Y. Times crossword puzzle. Duly frustrated, we can’t figure out the functionality or find what we went there looking for.
Smart Advantage is not a web developer. But we are very focused on our client’s purpose and message relative that purpose. We view hundreds of sites of our clients and their competitors and have learned a few lessons. Ask yourself:
- What do we want most from our site?
- Does it accomplish that in a user friendly manner?
- Did we make the visitor welcome or confused?
- Does it ever answer the question, “Why Buy From Us”?
A Forbes article recently cited, “Behind every great business site is a crystal clear, sensible vision.”