OK – so ask yourself this question: “What is it that your website does for you?” Not “What do you want it to do?”, but what does it do!
Notice the distinction. Bloggers who blog for other bloggers ask this question all of the time, although in sometimes slightly a different manner.They ask questions like “What is your Blog’s Mission Statement“or “If your blog disappeared, who would miss it?”
You need to be asking yourself the same question about your website!
Often people will go through the process of hiring a web designer, building a site, and smiling with glee as the site “goes live”. Yet they never knew, or communicated, with the designer what the site was supposed to do, or how it was supposed to do it.
Just as your business needs a Mission Statement to know its direction, and be able to run effectively, so does your website. Also know, that just as businesses can change direction to go with the changes presented to them, so can your website. Consider the following types of business websites, with an example Mission Statement:
|
Website Type |
(Generic) Mission Statement |
|---|---|
| Informational | To provide information about our business to current and prospective customers. |
| Customer Support | To increase our customer service by providing support to our existing customers. |
| Affiliate | To help our customers find useful products and services. |
| Sales | To allow our customers to order from us on-line. |
The question is of course is: Is your website doing what you want? If not you need to find someone who can work with you to develop your web strategy, be it for an informational website that should get people to call you, or to move into e-commerce, or any of the other types of websites.
About Walter Wimberly
hi it is my first comment on this website and at first I would like to thank you for the unique information, which I found in this and all previous topics , it really helped me very much. I will definitely put this blog on my google reader 😉 Also, I would like to ask – don’t you mind if I will quate some information from your website because I am writing articles for the Associated Content, Ezine and other articles directories (this is my part time job)? It would really help me with some of mine articles. Of course, I will mention your blog name or URL (not all articles directories allows URL’s , so I can’t 100% promise that you will get a direct link to your blog).