Website strategy: What is it and how do you create one?
You might be wondering… What is a website strategy? Why do you need a website strategy? When should you start thinking about a website strategy? How do you create a website strategy? What are examples of good website goals?
Discover the answers to these questions in this blog post. We cover what a website strategy is and why you need one. Find out when you should start thinking about your website strategy and the sequence of events for building your online presence. Read about the three parts of a website strategy development and find the exact questions you should be clear on for your website strategy. As a bonus, find examples of good & poor website goals to help you gain a better understanding of how you should be thinking about your website strategy.
What is a website strategy?
A website strategy is essentially a plan or a roadmap that combines all your efforts in a clear and structured way. Website strategy development involves combining your business goals, your marketing efforts, your communication and your branding in one place.
In order to merge together all these different concepts in a way that generates the desired results, you need to have a clear idea of what are you trying to achieve, how you plan to get there & how you will measure your success. In other words, you need a strategy! That’s why strategic website design is a process that you don’t want to skip over or rush.
In short, the main purpose of a website strategy is to introduce structure into the process and incorporate your business goals into your website design process.
Why do you need a website strategy?
Creating a website from scratch takes a lot of time and effort. While it may look simple, let me assure you it isn’t. It's an elaborate process that incorporates many different aspects and it's not something that you can just sit down one evening and dream up despite all the noise online that you can have your website up and running in a day or two. Well, if you’ve done all the preparations, planning & content creation in advance then you could get your website up and running in a very short period of time. But the whole process altogether takes time and you need to know what your goal is and how to get there. So in order to do it right the first time and build a successful online presence through website design, understand that you need to have a clear strategy which takes time to build.
Websites are not meant to be just pretty. Your audience isn’t ONLY looking to admire the visual appearance of your website. Instead, they’re looking to gain something from you. It’s an overlooked truth and a very fundamental idea to keep in mind when thinking about website design - your website first needs to fill a strategic role and only then an aesthetic role.
The only way to ensure that you're working towards your business’s strategic goals is by creating a website strategy.
When should you start thinking about a website strategy?
When starting a business or when thinking about building your website it can be very overwhelming and confusing what you should be focusing on first. There’s so much information coming at you all at once and there's many different aspects of your business that you need to consider.
You first need to have a clear idea about who you are and what your business goals are. Then, you will clarify and articulate this in more detail through branding. And once you have your branding done, you can start working on your website. Why in this order?
The basis of your business is your why, your mission & vision and what you are trying to achieve from a very fundamental point of view. This will be the first thing you define in your business plan. Your branding builds upon these ideas and creates an emotional connection with your audience through visual elements. Then, your website is a strategic tool for bringing your business goals to life. It’s a platform that showcases your business goals and your branding in a strategic way that is also aesthetically pleasing. Your website is the place where your branding & business goals come to life.
Speaking of branding & website design, make sure you grab our complete Website Design & Branding Checklist to take all the guesswork out of the process. This checklist provides you with all the elements of strategic and engaging website design and branding.
How to create a website strategy?
Your website strategy development is a process with three distinct parts. First is definition, second is implementation and third is analysis and adjustment.
1 DEFINITION
In this first part you define or clarify all the aspects of your business that inform your website design process. You should have a clear idea about your business goals from writing your business plan. Based on these answers, you should also be able to clearly articulate your website goals.
What are your business goals?
Let's start from the basics. You should already have a crystal clear idea of your business goals before you start working on your website. This is the foundation of it all and the reason why we're here in the first place. What are your business goals, what are you trying to achieve? This should be easy to explain in a few sentences and be understandable to anyone, also to people outside of your industry.
Who is your target audience?
Defining and understanding your target audience is one of the most important parts of the process. You need to be clear on who you are targeting and only after you can start to understand their needs and how you can help solve their problems.
Defining your target audience means being very clear on their demographics and understanding their behavior. You can segment your target audience using demographics like gender, age, occupation, location and many more aspects. Understanding your target audience is a more complicated task as you will need to know their behavior, their needs, their emotional state before making a purchase, their pain points, their problems. Through understanding their behavior, you can start to understand how you help solve their problems. Essentially, you need to be able to understand who they are and how it is being in their shoes the moment they encounter your business in order to best attract and serve your target audience.
What are you communicating to your audience?
You also need to be very clear on what you are trying to communicate to your audience. The best place to start is to think about your mission statement, your vision statement and your value statement. Why does your business exist and what do you want it to be in the future? What is your value proposition? Additionally, think in terms of your unique selling point. Why should your audience be attracted specifically to your business instead of your competition? What are you doing better or differently than your competition? What is the promise that you're making to them?
What are your website goals?
Your website should have clear goals for what you are trying to achieve through it. Your website goals will align closely with your business goals because your website is a strategic tool to further your business goals. So don't worry if some of those goals overlap.
Examples of good website goals include:
I want to convert visitors into sales - this is one of the most common website goals and needs no explanation as all businesses need to generate sales and profits.
I want to provide information on ABC - sometimes informing or educating your audience as best as you can will support your business goals directly. Examples of this could be when you bring out a new product that is not yet well known or if you introduce a new service that is not mainstream. In these cases you will need to inform your audience so that they feel comfortable with your product or service and they can make an educated decision.
I want to offer free and valuable content to my audience - offering free and valuable content can be great in supporting your mission to inform, educate or empower your audience.
I want to showcase my experience/work/art - showcasing what you are capable of is beneficial in more ways than you can count. This is especially important for service based businesses that don't have a product to display, they need to show their value proposition and expertise in different ways.
I want to grow the audience of my blog/podcast/vlog - If this supports your business goals then growing an audience is a great website goal.
I want to showcase and grow my community - people find a lot of value in belonging to a community. If this aligns with your business goals then gathering more members for your community can be a great website goal.
Examples of poor website goals include:
I want to have more visitors for my website - This isn't a goal, this is a means how you get to your goals. You need to be thinking more in terms of what you want your website visitors to do once they land on your website. Focus on answering - do you want them to do an action (like buy something or book an appointment) or do you want them to gain something (e.g. information, free content, knowledge)?
I want my website to be pretty - Again, this isn't a goal as your website is a strategic tool to further your business goals. While we will incorporate aesthetics into the website design process, looking pretty is not your business goal so it shouldn’t be your website goal either.
I want to launch my website in a day/week/insert another short timeline - This can't be a website goal because it only focuses on the timeline of the process. While launching a website in a day sounds enticing and there are some people offering this on the Internet, this is an unrealistic timeline and should definitely not be your goal. Rome wasn't built in a day and your website can’t be either. Think about what you are trying to achieve with your business and plan for enough time to build your website in a controlled and sustainable way.
2 IMPLEMENTATION
Implementation is the second part of a website strategy. This involves planning and building your website content and design in line with the defined strategy. This is where you get your hands dirty and you start looking at what type of content you need for your website. Creating content that speaks to your target audience and aligns with your website goals is a very important part of the process. Lastly, designing the website while taking into account the goals you've set and the content created. Each page on your website needs to have a clear goal and be designed with that strategic role in mind. On average, people spend only a few seconds on a page so ensuring that your website is strategically built is very important for leading your audience to the desired goal easily and quickly.
3 ANALYSIS & ADJUSTMENT
As a third part of a website strategy process, you need to analyze and adjust your website on a periodic basis. Running and managing your website is an ongoing process that has no finish line. Same as your business will always grow and change, your website will also need to grow and change with it. To enable this, you will need to periodically analyze the results of your website performance and measure how it's performing in relation to the goals that you've defined. Then, you will need to make adjustments in order to best meet your goals.
FREE RESOURCE
WEBSITE DESIGN & BRANDING CHECKLIST
In case you’re wondering… What are key elements of a strategic website design & branding? How to ensure your website & brand identity tick all the boxes? Does your current website & branding (still) suit your needs?
I hope these tips will be helpful for you on your website design journey. I'm so excited to see how you apply these in practice!
You might also be interested in the elements that website design includes besides the creation of stunning visuals to really nail your website strategy!
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