Are you thinking about building a website?  Do you have an idea for what that might look like?

Before you start to design, hire, or even build the site yourself there are a few things you should think about.

1. Who is your audience?

This may be an easy question or a complicated question, so it might help to break it down a little by also asking yourself.

• Who are your current customers?
• Who do you want as customers?
• Who do you think will be visiting your website?
• What motivates them?
• What is important to them?
• How comfortable are they with technology?
• What do they typically do online?

Understanding who is going to your site is crucial to making sure you giving them what they want. Because if you don’t know what they want it will be that much more difficult to get there attention and get them to do what you want them to do.

 2. Why would customers visit your site? 

Now that you  have determined who your audience is, it’s time to start thinking about why you want them to come to your site.  Once again you want to break down this question into parts.

• Is your potential client looking for something?
• Do you want them to buy something ?
• Do you want them to sign -up for something?
• What information will they need to make a decision?  

If you are not meeting the needs of your audience, they will most likely leave – quickly; leaving you with a lost opportunity.  On the other hand, if you are providing an easy to navigate and understandable site that gives them what they want, Your users will thank you by participating whether its signing up for information or purchasing products.

  3. How do you going to know if you are meeting your users needs?

Now this is a question you have to ask yourself every once in a while after you have your site up and running. This is both an internal and external questions and you will get answers by looking at internal and external metrics.

Internal metric and site analysis tools like Google Analytics or  Heatmaps.  These tools assist you in figuring out how long your customers are remaining on you site, what links they click on why they are leaving your site.

While gathering external metrics can be as  simple as creating a form to gather candid user feedback.  Take any opportunity you get to ask folks who have visited your site about their experience.

Ask the customer:

• Does the site provide all the information you were looking for?
• Does the site do a good job of reflecting the business?
• Is there anything I can do to improve the website? 

These few things will help you start to build your site with a clear direction and focus your voice, ensuring that the message you want your users to get is the message you are actually sending.  In the end, that means more success for you and your business.

Feel free to comment or ask questions below.