Identify the Focus and Goals of Your E-Commerce Web site
Before you start to build your web site or hire a web design firm to build
your web site for you, it will be extremely valuable for you to identify your
Goals and decide of a focus of your web site. This section of our e-commerce planning
guide will help you do that.
Identifying Your Goals
You first step toward creating an effective web site will be to articulate
your goals. By doing this, you are creating a clear set of guide lines which will
help you to determine whether your web site is accomplishing the things you want
it to accomplish.
Do the following exercise:
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Write down at least 5 to 10 things that you would like your web site to accomplish.
Write down whatever comes to mind, you can edit the list later.
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Here are some examples:
I want to sell my company's products on the Internet.
I want to promote by company's service.
I want to let people get the latest information about my governmental agency.
I want to share the knowledge my organization has collected with as many people
as possible.
I want to increase the sales of the "widgets" my company produces by
5000 units per month.
I want to provide automated customer service.
Next, organize the list by category. Give each item a rank, by order of priority:
1. Essential
2. Desirable
3. Optional
Look at each item that you ranked essential, and create a simple statement that
articulates your essential goals.
Now you have developed a single statement that clearly states the essential goals
of your web site. This statement in essence defines what you consider success
or failure. Second, you have created a list of all of the things you would like
to achieve with your web site and ranked their importance.
Creating Your Web site's Focus
Now that you have identified what you want to achieve with your web site, you
will want to identify how you want to present your web site in order to achieve
these goals. Keep in mind, that the Internet is one of the ways which your customers
will use to judge your organization. A poorly executed web site that frustrates
customers can diminish the reputation of even the best companies. Your web site
is part of your corporate branding, used properly it can help build your business.
It is essential, that you clearly focus on what you want to achieve with your
web site.
This will help you to develop a cohesive well organized web site. There are too
many web sites that are poorly designed and add no value to the company that it
represents.
How Do You Create A Web site that is Clearly Focused ?
Create a list of content that you can include on your web site that will help
accomplish the essential goals you have identified.
Create a Cohesive theme that creates strong corporate branding and that ties all
of these elements together.
Use consistent easy to identify navigational elements throughout the web site.
If you web site is clearly focused, your customers should enter your web site
and immediately be able to grasp what your company and web site is all about.
Remember this very important fact: Visitors to your web site will often make instantaneous
decisions whether they are going to stay or go. These decisions are often made
based on the following factors:
Is this web site interesting (or appealing).
Is it useful to me
Will I be able to find the information I want.
Will I be able to find the information I want without investing a lot of time
and effort.
A clearly focused web site, strongly branded web site will allow you to convey
your message to your visitor in a clear, concise, no non-sense manner.
In the next section, we will look at how to turn those who visit your web site
from browsers to buyers.
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