what is the purpose of your website?

What do your business goals have to do with your website? EVERYTHING!!!

Your website content, organization, and design must support your business goals. Otherwise, your website is not working for your business.

Before you start designing your website, ask yourself this critical question: "What is the purpose of my website?"

This step is a prerequisite for designing and building a website.

Your website has to be purposefully built to accomplish a specific business related goal.

Once you know the website's purpose, then you can design the website to fulfill that purpose. Without this, any web design is just shooting in the dark.

Sit down and write down answers to the following questions:

• What is the website supposed to do?
• How is it going to help your business achieve its objectives?
• How does the website fit into your overall business and marketing plan?

Is the purpose of your website to:

• Sell your services or products?
• Generate leads?
• Generate opt-ins for your email list?
• Promote your brand?

For a naturopath, it might be to get clients to pick up the phone and schedule an appointment.

For an online beauty store, it might be to sell products online.

For a life coach, it might be to get prospective clients to book an appointment for an initial consultation.

For an author, it might be to build a tribe of followers that will be eager to buy their books.

For a photographer, it might be to showcase their work so that prospective clients will be convinced to hire him/her.

For an architect, it might be to generate leads or requests for a quote.

For a restaurant, it might be to provide locations, hours, menus, testimonials, allow online reservations and take out orders.

If the purpose of your website is to generate leads, then guide potential clients through the website pages in such a way that they are getting all the information they need in order to make an informed decision to contact you.

* Add a visual portfolio of your work to showcase your skills
* Add a blog to demonstrate your knowledge
* Add customer testimonials to establish credibility and trust
* Add a Call To Action on every page telling your website visitors exactly what to

Once you know what you want your website to do, then you can use this as your starting point and design the website to fulfill that purpose. Keep that purpose in mind with every decision you make.

But here's what happens. Our goals shift. Our priorities change. Our businesses evolve.

It is so easy (and almost inevitable) for our websites to get out of alignment with the evolution of our businesses.

Every six months to a year don't forget to do a quick checkup on your website to see how well your website is supporting your current and future business goals.

#1: Write down a list of your business goals for the next 6 months. For example: grow my email list, write my first book, get a speaking gig, get hired as a consultant, get 10 new clients to book appointments, etc.

#2: Narrow your big list of goals down to the top 3 goals you want to accomplish first.

#3: Take your top 3 goals, and make sure that your website is supporting each of those goals. For example: if your goal is to grow your list, the content on your website supporting that goal is your opt-in form, your opt-in freebie, blog posts with content upgrades, a landing page.

#4: Take action: You'll quickly be able to see if your website content is fully supporting your business goals. If one of your goals isn't fully supported with good content, then you can take action. You can add testimonials or calls to action, you can create new pages to explain your offerings/services or you can add a contact form, a link to your calendar, or examples of your work. Think about the types of content that will help your website visitors take the actions you want them to take. That way your website will be 100% supporting your business goals.