Every so often, a company will decide it needs to redesign or refresh their website. But often neglect to think about why and what they want to achieve.
Seth Godin in a blog post a few days ago came up with a great list of “Things to ask before you redo your website” :-
- What is the goal of the site?
- In other words, when it’s working great, what specific outcomes will occur?
- Who are we trying to please? If it’s the boss, what does she want? Is impressing a certain kind of person important? Which kind?
- How many people on your team have to be involved? At what level?
- Who are we trying to reach? Is it everyone? Our customers? A certain kind of prospect?
- What are the sites that this group has demonstrated they enjoy interacting with?
- Are we trying to close sales?
- Are we telling a story?
- Are we earning permission to follow up?
- Are we hoping that people will watch or learn?
- Do we need people to spread the word using various social media tools?
- Are we building a tribe of people who will use the site to connect with each other?
- Do people find the site via word of mouth? Are they looking to answer a specific question?
- Is there ongoing news and updates that need to be presented to people?
- Is the site part of a larger suite of places online where people can find out about us, or is this our one sign post?
- Is that information high in bandwidth or just little bits of data?
- Do we want people to call us?
- How many times a month would we like people to come by? For how long?
- Who needs to update this site? How often?
- How often can we afford to overhaul this site?
- Does showing up in the search engines matter? If so, for what terms? At what cost? Will we be willing to compromise any of the things above in order to achieve this goal?
- Will the site need to be universally accessible? Do issues of disability or language or browser come into it?
- How much money do we have to spend? How much time?
And finally,
- Does the organization understand that ‘everything’ is not an option?
These questions can be grouped into four important areas which are important to understand for every web project:
1. Who is visiting the site?
2. Why are they coming? What is the purpose of their visit?
3. What action would we like them to take and does this fit with the reason for their visit?
4. What is our commitment to making this re-design a success (level of budget etc)?
If you believe your site would benefit from a make-over, give us a call and we’ll help you through the process and ensure the project is designed for conversion and success.
