What is your objective? Can you define the purpose of your website? We like to ask our clients to write down the purpose of their website in a single paragraph. Quite often, when we compare this paragraph to the actual website we find that the objective of the website owner is very different from the actual website. Typically, the development phase of the website lost the focus or the original vision of the owner.
It's easy to loose focus. There are many design choices to make. Concepts and goals will change as you see your ideas develop on the web. The original intent can get lost or may have changed. We have found the best way to keep that focus is to write down the objective. If the objective changes, and that happens more times than not, just rewrite your objective. As you progress through your development process continually RTO (Read-The-Objective). RTO several times a day, and when you think you are done with your website, RTO again. Does your website meet your objective? If not, you have to decide if your objective has changed or if you need to fix your website. These are the only two alternatives -- see how focused we can be.
Getting Focused
What do you need to consider when you are creating your objective statement for your website? That is entirely up to you but, here are some questions that we recommend you consider when you develop your objective.
- Who are my target visitors (or customers if you prefer)?
- How will these visitors find my website?
- What key words or phrases are going to be important?
- Is my goal to generate revenue or to cut operating costs?
- What do I want these visitors to do, once they have found my site?
- What information do I want to convey to my customers?
- What does the current Internet market currently look like?
- Who are my competitors?
- Who is currently successful in my internet market place?
- Who's getting the best Search Engine listings?
- What are my competitive advantages and weaknesses?
Our Objective Statement for Internet-Engine.net is as follows:
"We will use our website to introduce our services to prospective clients who are looking to conceptualize, build, improve and/or manage their web sites."
One of our key services is to generate traffic for our customers through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). (See Our Client's Results) We will offer sample services at a low introductory price with the intent of creating long-term satisfied customer relationships.
Our website will demonstrate our ability to make our clients successful. We will generate traffic to our website through robust website design that effectively maximizes search engine rankings and creates a network of links with other websites. We will provide a limited amount of useful information for free but ultimately our goal is to create paying clients out of our visitors." (Remember this should be an evolving process -- always provide for the opportunity to enhance and improve your website)
Focus must be provided by the website owner. That is the non-technical part of website development.
Focus must come before website development.
