If you’re getting ready or want to redo your website soon, you might think that the first thing you need to think through is how you want it to look.
Or maybe you know that your business has changed a bit, so you want to start with rewriting some of the copy.
But did you know what the real first step of website rebuild is?
Establishing Website Objectives
Before you write a line of copy, pick a couple colors, or think about how you’re going to rebuild a website, you need to think about the why. Why are you doing the rebuild in the first place? What are you hoping to get out of an updated website (more calls, more leads, more sales, fewer time-wasting questions, etc)? There are a lot of things that can go into your why, and this question will have answers that are 100% unique to you and your business.
One thing that is great about a website is they are flexible; you’re able to tweak them to get them right. But you still want to make sure that if you’re going to invest in a website rebuild, especially if you’re hiring a web development company to take care of that for you, that you’ve thought through everything you want to get out of the new website. After all, websites are an investment in your business. A new website needs to be able to help you increase your profits, reduce and streamline your workflows, and even automate areas of your business to be a worthwhile investment.
Questions to Ask Yourself
In you’re not entirely sure where to start, there are a few questions that I go through with my own clients when doing their project kick off calls. They help us to think through the site’s goals and make sure we’re on the same page with what we want the site to do:
- Are you speaking to the same audience you were before?
- What’s changed in your business that you need to ensure you’re communicating on your website now?
- Have you added any new services or products?
- Do you get a lot of the same questions over and over again?
- What kinds of things do you want a customer to do on your website, i.e. pick up the phone, fill out a form, make a purchase, etc?
- Do you want to sell more products?
- Do you to get more phone calls?
- Do you want more lead forms filled out?
- How much of your customer journey are you comfortable automating? (Hint – we can automate a lot!)
- Do you need to build up an email newsletter list, i.e. use a lead capture?
- Do you just need more website traffic?
Sit down and answer those questions, and dig deeper into what exactly you want your website to do for you. I often tell my marketing students to set SMART goals – goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and have an attached Time Frame. Once you’ve dug into your whys, you can set SMART goals that you want the website to achieve.
When you really start digging into these things and answering the above questions, you may not come up with the answers you expected at first. And that’s part of why this step is so vital – because it absolutely helps you discover exactly what your website should be doing for you and your business.
Your Website is a Tool
That’s another thing to keep in mind – your website should never be just an online brochure. Even for the simplest sites, it should do something for you and your business. That can be as simple as streamlining a few of your onboarding processes, answering frequently asked questions (so you get fewer time wasting calls) or as complex as selling more and more products and services.
At the end of the day, your website is absolutely an investment into your business. You deserve to get a return on that investment, but the only way to do that is to take a breath upfront and examine what you want out of the website. After all, if you don’t know exactly what you want a website rebuild to do for you and your business, it’s hard for you to measure that success.
And if you’re ready to see how a website rebuild can go when it’s carefully planned all the way through, I’d love to chat!
