Digging in for web success - your goals and audience

You know how prevalent the Internet has become in our society. As you continue to understand this ever-changing communication tool, it remains essential to have an effective web presence – not just a web site, but a real presence on the web.

The Internet world isn’t static. You should critically reevaluate your web presence every six to twelve months. If you have added new programs, products or services, this will enable you to stay in step.

Set Your Goals

The basis for any project needs to begin with clearly understanding your goals. This is critical to maximize your online strategy and should tie back to your overall business and marketing goals. Your website goals will help to guide many of your decisions for content, navigation, and design/lay-out. Without them, your web site will lack a clear cohesion and focus.

Some questions to ask yourself while setting goals for your website

Why are you undertaking the project? What are you trying to achieve? How does this fit within your overall strategy of reaching your audience? How will you know if you’ve met your goals? Are your goals clear and measurable?

There are many potential goals for a web site. You should consider one or two key goals and then some smaller goals within that. Some example goals include:

• To generate leads for potential business
• To sell products and services
• To provide information about your organization to prospects.

The best goals will also be clearly measurable.

Measurements come in different forms and include statistics from both the web site as well as other sources, such as visitor reports.

• Increase in the number of calls from prospects finding you on the web
• Increase in visits to the website by x%
• Reduction of the number of support calls by x%.
• Increase in online sales (for e-commerce sites)

Target your audience

Once you have specific goals for your web site, next you need to clearly understand your target audience. Your primary audience will drive many of your decisions and priorities for your web site. The more information you know about your audience, the more relevant you will be able to make your website and the closer you can align you site with their needs.

Understand who your audience is.

There isn’t a specific formula for this, but start by asking yourself questions such as:

• What does your typical customer look like?
• What do your customers have in common?
• What are their basic demographics?
  • What are their general age ranges?
  • Are they mostly male, mostly female, or a mix of both?
• What does your ideal customer look like?
• Are you targeting specific vertical markets?
• Are they new prospects or returning customers?
• Why are they coming to your website? What information are they looking for?

Make your site appeal to your audience.

Your audience will drive many decisions that you will make in the design process, such as:

• the personality of the copy/content
• what items go first in the navigation menus
• information you highlight on the front page
• content you put on your site
• the colors of the site & style of graphics
• the welcome message you select to present

Understanding your goals and your audience are the critical first steps to any successful website. They drive many of your decisions in the initial development process and are also very useful for measuring your ongoing success and adjusting your strategy down the road. Next month, we will explore the next critical step of Focusing Your Content.

Our goal is to aid you in developing a more successful web presence. We will equip you to better reach your audience. The more educated you are in your approach the more likely you will be to succeed in your efforts. And ultimately, the more successful you will be in making your organization stand out as unique in your marketplace. Join us over the next few months as we dig deeper into more ways you can improve your web presence by focusing on your audience and calling them to action.

We are dedicating this newsletter to being a ‘katalyst for your online success.’ We welcome your feedback: {contactlink 2}. Stay tuned for upcoming issues as we explore each of these areas in more depth.

We would love to assist you in taking these essential steps. Call us at (703) 972-9134 or contact us via email at {contactlink 1}.

Donald Cranford has been in Marketing, Product Development and Product Management in the technology industry for 14 years. He founded Katalyst Solutions in 2004 to assist small businesses, non-profits, and churches in succeeding online.

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