Five Questions to Answer Before You Build Your Website

Five Questions to Answer Before You Build Your Website


It is not just a website. It is where the bricks-and-mortar world
meets the clicks-and-mortar world, and your website has an impact on
your company’s image. Because your online market presence is viewed by
individual-defined norms, you must ensure the site meets the
expectations of your site visitors. In fact, a visit to your site must
not only meet the visitor’s needs, but also delight her to promote
subsequent returns. After all, what good is your site if you only get
someone to stop by once and never return again? Although there are many
different objectives and strategies for various websites, one
fundamental objective is to have visitors bookmark the site and return
again and again and again.

So how can you satisfy your visitors’ needs and increase the
frequency of visits from the same visitors? There is no magic formula or
secret java scripting that will do it. However, laying the foundation of
your site by answering five basic questions prior to building your site
will allow you to develop an online presence that meets your business
goals and encourages visitors to return to your site time after time.
The five questions to be answered are: 1) Who is your target audience,
2) What are the objectives of your website, 3) What does a visitor
expect from your site, 4) What do you want the visitor to leave with,
and 5) Why should a visitor return to your site?

Defining the Target Audience


The web gives people access to, and control of, information at their
convenience. Knowing who your target audience is a crucial step that
needs to be clearly defined prior to
developing site
content or design.
By knowing who your audience is you can answer the five questions that
lay the foundation for your website with greater accuracy. In fact, the
better you know who your audience is and what they expect to get from a
visit to your site, the more relevant you can make your site.

Many websites are designed to cater to the needs of a nondescript
mass audience. Take a quick look at most websites and you will find the
standard out-of-the-box website package with six pages – including “Who
we are,” What we do,” and “Our favorite links.” In order to satisfy the
dramatically different needs of a wide variety of people, web developers
create a generic site that provides no real value for the visitor or the
company. The visitor does not find relevant information, and decides
that the website is not adequate for his needs. No bookmarks are made
and the visitor never returns. The company (site owner) gets some level
of activity as measured by
hits and page views, but never builds any
loyalty to the site so nearly all visitors are first-time, last-time
surfers.

Who is your target audience?


Defining the target audience and their needs is an important first
step in building your website and a critical element to increasing the
loyalty on your site. Who are the people that will use your website?
Engineers that require technical data or students looking for specific
information for a term paper project? How do they like to receive and
use the information they collect on the Internet? Is the visual impact
more important or less important to effectively delivering your message?
How can your site help satisfy the needs of your target audience? You
can see that knowing your target audience is much more than figuring out
the demographics like gender, age, education level and income. Knowing
your audience is the only true way to provide
relevant content the way
your audience wants to receive it. Define your target audience and get
to know them better than your competitors. After all, the only
sustainable competitive advantage is the understanding you have of your
customers that your competitors do not have.

What are the objectives of your website?


Is it already obvious to you why you need a website? For many
companies it is not so much a clear strategy as it is wanting to keep up
with the Jones'. “Our biggest competitor has a website and we don’t want
to seem like they can do something we can’t.” If this is your reasoning
for embarking on an e-commerce initiative, you need to take a step back
and consider what a website could offer your customers that is of true
value – rather than to forge ahead with no direction.

There are many reasons for building an online presence that
compliments or enhances your existing offline presence. For many
companies, the primary justification for launching a website is because
everybody else has one. Although this thinking is somewhat myopic and
inward looking, because everyone else does have a website may mean that
without a web presence your company is led out to pasture in the future.


One of the most basic reasons for building an online presence is that
a website serves as one more tool for communicating with your internal
and external audiences cost-effectively and conveniently. Cost-effective
in the sense that the Internet has allowed small, capital-limited
businesses the chance to look a lot bigger than they really are –
opening the door to an expanded marketplace. Small businesses are no
longer restricted by their location and ability to touch the customer
personally. Now, with an online presence that delivers targeted
communications you can drive in traffic and connect with customers that
would have been cost-prohibitive to reach using traditional marketing
tools.

There are many reasons why your company should have a presence on the
web. However, the only ones that matter are those that are
customer-focused. This alternative channel of communication saves time
for the visitor and permits her to access the information at her
convenience. It also provides the ability for your company to capture
information on your site visitors to build customer profiles and better
serve your customers.

What does a visitor expect from your site?


If you have already developed a visceral understanding of your target
audience, realizing the expectations of your site visitors becomes
second nature. However, it is important to take the customer’s
perspective to adequately define what your visitors expect from your
site. Most Internet users will expect ease-of-use (referring to the
navigation ease) of your site as well as relevant information that makes
their lives easier. These expectations go hand-in-hand with the
assumption that your site will download quickly. The average Internet
user will wait no more than eight seconds before jumping to another page
or stopping the transmission if the page is too slow to open.

Beyond this, depending on your business and target audience, some
users will want to be entertained and be dissatisfied if the
entertainment value does not meet their expectations. Others will look
for ordering information, pre-sales services, and company information.
The expectations will vary from person to person, but if you have
defined your target audience into the smallest homogenous segment
possible (with the goal of a market segment of one), you will be able to
meet your visitors’ expectations in both content and design of your
website.

What do you want the visitor to leave with?


Once you have a solid understanding of what your site visitors expect
from your site, you need to determine what it is that you want the
visitor to leave with after visiting your website. Are you attempting to
reduce the sales cycle time and want to ensure that your customer’s
questions about your product’s performance and specifications are
answered? Or are you looking to improve your brand image and need to
find ways to enhance your offline brand online? Depending on your goals,
you will want to develop different strategies for different goals.

Ask yourself what it is that you want your visitors to leave with and
then consider whether you can address those needs with a focus on
content or on design of the site. Most likely you will want to provide a
combination of rich content that helps satisfy customer needs
complemented by a good website design that allows the user to find the
information or conduct the transaction quickly and easily.

Why should someone return to your site?


Is there any good reason that a visitor should bookmark your site so
that he will return again? If not, what needs to be improved within your
site plan that will encourage repeat visits? Although this question is
last in this article, it is equally important to targeting the right
audience. Whatever the objectives and reasons are for creating an online
presence for your company, if you are not driving people back to your
site, your website efforts are in vain. After all, why spend the time
and money on developing a site if its only purpose is to keep your
competition up to speed on what you are doing and how you market your
business?

By asking yourself, “Why should someone return to my site?” you are
forcing yourself to take a hard look at your website initiative and the
justification for the investment. Developing loyalty from your customers
through your online activities will be seen in your offline revenues and
profits. Providing relevant information, making it easier for your
customer to do her job, and creating a compelling site are some basic
tactics that will encourage people to return to your website.
Determining what it is that is of value to your target audience will be
the cornerstone of your web activities.

Five Questions, Five Answers


There are many excellent books, magazines, and e-zines available that
describe in great detail the points presented in this article. However,
for those of you who are considering building a website, the questions
posed here will help to layout the roadmap for your site. Laying the
foundation of your site by answering these five basic questions prior to
building your site will allow you to develop an online presence that
meets your business goals and encourages visitors to return to your
site. The key to getting off on the right foot is to complete your
homework prior to launching your web initiatives. Because the Internet
is in a constant state of change, those of you who have already created
your site can easily take a step back and apply these five areas to your
existing site strategy to ensure a solid foundation that meets your
customers’ expectations.


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