Many businesses have websites that are merely a brochure of their products or services. They appear to have given very little consideration to Search Engine Optimisation to maximise their returns from their Internet investment.

Before you spend any money on design or development, you should sit down and define who you are creating your website for and what you want you consider has been a successful visit to your site.

This article will help you define your target audience and goals for your website.

What are you selling?

  • Are you selling a product or service?
  • Is it something that can be sold online?
  • Is it primarily a local service or is the target national or international? (If international then is language a barrier?).

Who is your website aimed at?

Before you can decide what a successful visit is, you should try and define categories of visitors you are targeting. Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Is your service aimed at individuals or businesses? If the answer is ‘both’ then does each need different consideration? (The answer to this is almost always ‘Yes’).
  • Are you targeting on price or quality? Targeting both is rarely successful.
  • Are time factors an issue? Do customers buy at a particular time of the year or at a particular time in their lives?
  • Is there the potential for repeat business or selling additional goods or services?

What is a successful visit?

Describe what it is you want from a visitor. What do you consider the criteria for their visit being successful? For example:

  • Buy something.
  • Sign up to a mailing list or newsletter.
  • Download a sales brochure.
  • Book a consultation.
  • Request more information.
  • Book an appointment.

You may have targeted more than one type of successful visitor. For each type, describe how you envisage their ‘journey’ through your website. Each journey will need a ‘landing page’ where they arrive on your site and a ‘money’ page where they become a ‘successful’ visitor.

You may want to consider the four traditional market terms to describe visitors to your site:

  • A Suspect is someone who may potentially have a need or desire for your goods or services. Anyone who visits your site can be considered a suspect.
  • A Prospect is someone who has expressed an interest in your goods or services, for example they have requested a brochure or further information.
  • A Lead is somebody who is ready to buy. Someone who has booked a consultation can be considered a lead.
  • A Sale is somebody who has actually purchased goods or services.

When defining your possible visitor ‘journeys’ as mentioned above, you should consider how you can address each class of visitor.

Competitors

Every business has competitors.

Conduct an honest review of your main competitors. If your business is primarily local then include your local competition, otherwise just include websites of Internet rivals (use Google to find suitable rival sites if you are unaware of who your competitors are).

For each competitor’s site, put yourself in the shoes of each of your classes of visitor and ask yourself the following questions (about the competitor’s site):

  • Does the site address my needs?Is the site easy to use?
  • What aspects to I particularly like or dislike?
  • Are there any features, products or services that they have that I hadn’t considered for my own site but perhaps now should have?

Conclusion

You will find spending a few hours defining your website target audience, their needs and how you will address them as well as reviewing how rivals have tackled the same problems is time well spent. At the end of the exercise you should have a detailed definition of what you now need from your own website.

Next step: Assessing keywords