Have you ever asked yourself the million dollar question? “What is the purpose of your website?”
It seems like an obvious question doesn’t it? However, when we ask potential new customers this question, they often struggle to answer it. Sometimes they come up with something vague, such as “to get more business”. Why not get one step ahead and think deeply about why you need a website? After all, it’s a big investment in time, effort and money on something that is going to be a significant tool in your business. When thinking about a new website, show your web company how serious you are about results by having a clear and specific purpose for your new website when you talk to them.
There are lots of reasons to have a website and it’s important you know what your’s is. Here are a few examples to help and hopefully prompt some thought into “What is the purpose of your new website”.
To get more business
- This is usually the most popular answer, but it needs to be more specific. Instead, how about:
- To increase the number of online enquiries we currently get, by 200% over the next 12 months.
- To triple the number of telephone calls we get via the website, within 6 months of going live.
To get more traffic
- Again, very generic so would be better if it was more specific. Here’s some suggestions:
- To double our traffic from organic search by 50% this year
- To increase traffic from social media by 75% within 6 months of going live
- To triple the number of people reading our blog content
To simplify our sales process
- With certain products/services you could start taking sales/orders directly from the website. Your goal could be to get 100 new orders directly from the website over the next 3 months.
To improve our perception in the market
- Do you want to look bigger? Better? More advanced? Be specific and decide how you can measure this. You might need to carry out surveys to be able to measure how effective it’s been.
To help our sales team
- How? What help do they need? How will you measure it?
To improve customer service
- In what way?
- How will you measure this?
You hopefully get the idea. Be specific, make it something you can measure and be sure you communicate it to your web company. If you do, they should be able to focus their effort on the website’s purpose – not just making it look pretty – unless that’s your goal!