What is the Purpose of Your Website?

Every website needs a purpose. Before you even begin to design or write any content, you need to know what you want your website to do for you. That is step one in starting a website.

Deciding on the purpose of your website is a lot like a business plan. It should define what you want to accomplish, how you plan to do it, and be checked in on periodically to ensure it’s maintaining the direction you want. How else would you know if it’s doing its job? Without a clear path showing what you want your website to do, it’s going to be difficult to determine if it’s providing any benefit to you at all.

Why do you want a Website?

Many business owners want a website, but don’t really have a clue why they would need one. The competition has one, the internet is a worldwide market place, and everyone’s online. These are just some of the reasons people decide to start a website, but it usually stops there.

Chris Beane of Powerup PCs wanted a website for potential customers to learn about his computer repair business. The site would be for informational purposes, allowing visitors to find out what his business offered. Through word of mouth advertising, business cards, and search engine traffic, the site does exactly what it is meant to do. It provides additional information about the business, with contact information.

A plan for your website does not need to be overly extensive or fill 1200 page D-Ring binders. It needs to be something realistic and concrete. A website that’s goal is to serve information to the public about a business has a better chance than one without a purpose and hopes to make millions.

Besides deciding what you want your website to do, you should also decide what you want people to do on your website. This will give you a good idea of what you need to do with your website to allow your visitors to accomplish the tasks you'd like them to be able to do.

A site without a purpose

Failing to define the goals of your website can leave you in a big hurt as time goes on. Believe me, I’ve been there. This is why it’s a good idea to decide early in the game what you want your website to do and how you plan to make it happen.

I created and managed a website for several years that had no clear goal. It was simply a message board and image host that served as a place for my friends and me to talk to each other. Since we were all familiar with a similar website (where many of us met each other), we thought all we needed was the same tools it had. That was far from the reality of it.

The site failed to attract anyone else because there was no real purpose for it. It was just another message board without a reason, without a plan. To top it off, new “ideas” were added frequently, patched in and destroyed any semblance of flow that the site may have had. With a bunch of people talking about so many topics and no clear idea of what the site was about, there is no wonder why it failed to attract even 10 new people a month.

Web Designers Serving Asheboro, High Point and Greensboro

Finding a reason to have a website is the first thing you should do. Setup a list of goals you’d like to accomplish by creating a site, and start working toward them.

Our website had three main goals in mind when we decided to create it (ignoring the fact that a web design company without a website is a little silly). We wanted to:

Give potential clients information about our business and work,
Share our knowledge of web design, online marketing, and writing with interested visitors, and
Branch out further into the local area

These objectives were very simple, and allowed us to focus on what we needed to do in order to meet our goals. As I’ve said, it doesn’t have to be anything overblown, but a good plan can mean a huge difference when you create your website.

With our need to extend ourselves further into the local area (in this case not just Asheboro, but the High Point and Greensboro market as well), we had to make changes to our SEO and how we planned to present some of our information. We also had to decide on new and altered marketing tactics that directly related to the business and website.

Start now

It doesn’t matter if you’re a dentist, a doctor, a horse trainer or a shop owner in the mall. If you want to provide customer support, business information, or sales to the public you should decide what you want your website to do. Every website is different, but every website should have a purpose.

After you decide what you want your website to do, what you want your visitors to come there for, and how you plan to make it work is when you can move on to the next steps of creating your website.

Comments

Eduardo
08/23/09, 8:30pm

Great and simple article! Straight to the point. Most of the time people think they have a purpose, but they fail to follow it getting distract by the quick money idea. Without a CLEAR and solid purpose you become vulnerable.

Dave
10/23/09, 10:59am

Thanks Eduardo!

You're right, without knowing what you want your site to do, you'll leave yourself open to problems down the road. You won't have the right understanding of what your website is achieving for your business, at least not as well as you could. Just setting out with "I'm going to build a website for my business!" without any goals as to what it should do, you could have issues with the next steps.