First steps to creating a website strategy
Photo by Jani Kaasinen on Unsplash
If you really want to achieve your business goals, simply having a website is not enough.
If you want to get the most of your website - reach new customers, promote your products or services, and build your brand, you need to have a website strategy. Developing a strategy will make your website more effective and help you build your business
What is a website strategy?
A website strategy is a plan that outlines the goals for your website and how you plan to achieve them. Ideally, it should include your target audience, your content strategy, your SEO strategy, and your social media strategy.
Why is a website strategy important?
A website strategy helps you build your business because it makes you focus on your business. I often meet clients who want to build a website, but haven’t yet really defined their business strategy. Writing a website strategy can support this work.
Steps to create a website strategy
To develop an effective website strategy, you need to:
Set clear goals: What do you want your business to achieve? What do you want your website to achieve? Do you want to generate leads, increase sales, or build brand awareness? Having clear business and website goals will help you to focus your efforts and measure your results.
Do your research
Research your target audience: What are their needs and interests? What are their pain points? I recommend where possible to always conduct user research.
Review your content: What do you have already and how well is it working? By reviewing your current content, you can see what is working for your audience and what is not. This will help you to determine what kind of content to focus on in your new website strategy and what gaps you have to fill.
Research your competitors: What are other businesses in your industry doing with their website? What are their strengths and weaknesses? By understanding your competition, you can develop a website strategy that will help you stand out from the crowd.
Research your search terms: What search terms are your users using to find you or your competitors? What search terms do you want to be ranked for? Getting the right keyword search terms will help more people to find your website when they search for those keywords. It also helps you align your content strategy to terms the user relates to and finds useful.
Create a content strategy: Your content strategy should align with your goals: Your content should be informative, engaging, and relevant to your target audience. It should also be optimised for search engines. Creating a content calendar will help you plan and schedule your content so that you are always publishing fresh targetted content through your marketing channels.
Market your website: Once you have created your website, you need to market it so that people can find it. There are many different ways to market a website, such as search engine marketing, social media marketing, advertising or email marketing.
Measure your results: Once you have implemented your strategy, be sure to measure your results. This will help you to see what is working and what is not and help you refine and improve your strategy over the years.
Refine and re-do
It’s really important to remember that developing your website strategy is not a one time thing. You should review your strategy regularly. Your strategy should be flexible enough to change as your business grows and changes.
Plan for these reviews, and be realistic about your resources and capabilities to do this.
Your website is a big investment of your resources - time and money. A well planned and considered strategy will also support your staff and customers and make your website much much more effective.
If you would like support with your website strategy
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