Building A Business Website: Step 1
Step 1 in Building A Business Website:
What do you want your website to accomplish?
One of the essential keys to web site success is determining what you want your website to DO for your business.
Many businesses, both big and small, begin the whole “website creation process” from the mindset of “We need a website - NOW!”
However, launching a website without thinking about why you need a website is a surefire way to waste time/energy and money.
- What’s the benefit of having a website for your business?
- What are your goals for the business?
- How can your website facilitate those business goals?
- What do you need your business’ website to do?
It’s important to remember that your website is not your business, it’s a TOOL for your business.
The first step in building a business website is to ask the question:
What do you want your website to accomplish?
It’s the old, “You’ve got to establish a destination so you know which road to take.” There are a lot of great reasons to have a website for your business, but paying for hosting and keeping a web developer in business are not amongst the good reasons to have a website.
Way, way, way too many business websites are launched without a goal or a plan. I actually got a web development job from a company whose sole reason for creating a website was so that vendors would do business with the company. Turns out that they were having trouble getting vendors to take them seriously as a small business. Many vendors in their industry wouldn’t establish and account with a business that didn’t already have a website. With that as a goal, it wasn’t hard to create a website which satisfied that goal.
Why does your business need a website? What do you want your business website to do? There are lots of functions a website can perform:
- Your business website can act as an easy way for prospective customers to find you.
- Your business website can act as a powerful customer service tool.
- Your business website can act as a powerful marketing tool.
- Your business website can act as a powerful communication tool.
However, your business website won’t act as ANY of these things if you don’t build it with a goal in mind.
One of the keys to web site success is Business Website Design Preparation. However, before you can begin design preparation, you must first establish a goal.
PICK ONE from the list above. Create a website which accomplishes that goal and then you’ll be ready to create the next generation website for your business (or another website) to accomplish a SECOND goal.
Turns out you build a website the same way you eat an elephant - one bite at a time!
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[...] you’ve decided upon a GOAL for your website, (Step 1 in Building a Business Website), then it’s time to perform a little further analysis before you begin Business Website Design [...]
[...] first step to building a successful business website is to determine what you want your website to DO for your [...]
[...] 1 in Building A Business Website is to determine what you want your website to [...]