Make Your Website Better

This morning I taught a workshop, co-leading with David Robinson at Birch Studio, on creating more compelling web sites. David and I both felt very strongly that we wanted to have participants focus on their business and marketing goals first. We’ve both found this to be a big hurdle that we have to help clients jump over when they want a new web site.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the realm of possibility–using blogs, doing SEO, whether to use Flash, etc. etc.–that clients lose track of the primary and enduring purpose of a web site, fulfilling mission-critical goals (apologies for the jargon, but it seems to hit the point here). For the last ten years I’ve done a lot of subcontracting with LeapFrog Solutions, Inc. in Fairfax, VA. A key part of the process with clients has been to have them complete a questionnaire in which they share a lot of information about their business and marketing, their audiences, competitors and SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats).

It’s the foundation of the marketing plan, and also of the web site strategy. It’s amazing how many web sites fail to state on the home page what kind of business they are and who they serve. Focusing on goals and communicating your business purpose, showing your awareness of what your audience is looking for are a significant first step in usability. Clarity makes it much easier to put together the many pieces of usability, and also search engine optimization. I’ll talk about this more in the next post.

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