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What's the Point of Your Web Site?I have been doing a lot of seminars lately on Web design. One of most important hunks that I cover is the need to identify goals clearly. Surprisingly, most people really don't have a defined list of objectives for their site. Less of a shock, though, is that almost no one has a real understanding of their visitors' needs and wants. My all-time favorite speaker, whom I've paraphrased before, is Zig Ziglar. In fact, if I only lost about 200 pounds, shaved off this stubble on my face, picked up a Mississippi/Texas accent, and became a lot handsomer, I'd try to become as good a speaker as Ol' Zig. But I digress. One of Zig's maxims goes something like this: "You can get everything you want if you help others get what they want." That's a motivational speaker talking there, and I'll let you decide how much the concept applies in your daily life. But it certainly applies in Web design. Because if you're not giving your guests what they want, they won't explore your site, they won't come back, they won't buy anything, and they won't refer their friends. In other words, you don't have a chance of meeting YOUR goals if you're not first focusing on helping them meet THEIR goals. They don't care about your objectives. All they want is what they want. It's YOUR job to figure out what that is...not force them to accept what you chose to give them. They'll just pass you and your beautiful site on by. Most people who design Web sites don't understand this basic marketing and sales concept of letting the customer be in charge. Why? Because these people are mostly graphic designers and technology types who just don't get it. They don't "grok" the marketing and sales concept that every good salesperson knows. The best way to sell is to think like your customer and figure out how your product helps them meet their needs. But non-sales types only think in terms of what works for them and their bosses. They don't look at the situation from the customer's perspective. I usually poll the room during my seminars and ask the participants to explain the objective of their site. I get responses like "to provide information" from government agencies, and "to sell stuff" from retailers. Every once in a while, someone will mention "branding" or "to sell advertising." Few of them have focused their plans into some sort of actionable objectives, and I've never heard anyone say, "to meet the needs of my visitors." One fellow worked for a government agency. His boss wanted to add a particularly stupid function to their Web page. No one, including the audience, could figure out why. It was nothing but a self-indulgent vanity that would give the boss something to brag about, but would add no real usefulness to the site. While this fellow was frustrated by the situation, he also didn't "get it" himself. When I asked what he wanted to do with the site, he said, "...well, I want to spruce up the site, add some neat stuff, and make it look nice." Now don't get me wrong, making a site look nice is a laudable goal. But it's not why most people will come to your site over and over again. If you're an entertainment site, yeah - the more whiz-bang it is, the better. But if you're a government agency and you're trying to give your visitors the information and functionality they need and want, you're going to have to put yourself in their shoes. One way to do this, and it will even add some nice interactivity to your site, is to set up a poll or survey. Ask your audience for the standard demographic information, but also ask what they want. What are they looking for? What will make them come back to your site over and over again? And for a start, take a look at your competition. What are THEY doing for YOUR customers? Get ideas from them. As an example of this process of identifying your goals and your visitors' goals, let me tell you what I recently did. I just created a new site for a new series of seminars I'm doing on managing the payroll department. Yes, if you were to look at my biography or resume, you'd find that I used to be an accountant. "That explains it!" is probably what you're thinking right about now. Well, my past is finally coming back to haunt me. The frightening part is that I actually enjoy doing these seminars. They involve all the stuff I liked about accounting, with none of the math. I had thought I'd gotten bean-counting out of my blood, but apparently not. In any case, to take advantage of my study and research in this area, I set up a site called www.payrollstuff.com. My objectives are to get subscribers for the site newsletter, to promote the payroll seminars, and eventually to sell payroll and related books through Amazon.com. However, I asked myself, "what are the needs and objectives of the people who visit my site?" My answer was that they want quick and easy access to payroll data and tools. In other words, fast information. So I geared my site to that need. It downloads VERY quickly (in less than 2 seconds over a dial-up connection) and the links to the information are clear and easy to find. The links themselves are described so the user knows what they're getting before they click through. And I think I've designed it to accomplish my objectives too. All in all, the site should be successful...assuming anyone visits it in the first place, which is a completely separate problem. As an aside, if you do visit the site, you'll notice its friendliness to search engines. The text is keyword intensive ("payroll" is mentioned 42 million times), there are few graphics and special effects, keywords are used in the heading tags, and the meta and title tags are relevant. In the coming weeks, we'll see what Google and company think about it. But back to your goals. Remember to ask yourself what your specific and actionable plans are for your site. Then figure out what your customer's wants and needs are. Hopefully their goals and your goals match up. Only then can you start to build a useful and productive site. In every seminar, I ask the audience who has visited and bought from Amazon.com. Most of them raise their hand. Then I ask the reason why. The answers I get include, "convenience," "reliability," "service," "they remember who I am," "they've got great information on books," and "they have almost any book I want." I've asked this question in a LOT of seminars and not one person has ever said they visited Amazon.com because of the beauty of the site. So if your focus is on superficial issues, and you're not paying attention to both your goals and those of your visitors, you're bound to fail. Or if we want to be politically correct, you're likely to be success-challenged.
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