The following questions will help you identify what to include in your website.
You need to identify
- the business and branding goals of your site's owners
- the needs and goals of your site's users
- the technical and human resources available to build and maintain your
site
Site Owner Business Goals
Designing a site has to begin with setting goals for what the site owners want
the site to accomplish. Is it an e-commerce site? An intranet for disbursing
company information? A library site? A site about an engineering project?
Identifying and meeting site owner goals is essential if you want to create
a sustainable, successful site. Frankly, even if the users like it a lot, the
site won't stay up if the site owners' needs aren't being
met.
For example, if you're building a library site, maybe the site owner
goals are to increase the number of books renewed or fines paid online, to decrease
the number of in-person reference requests, to replace copy requests with electronic
distribution, or to increase usage of the library's book holdings.
Some questions that can help you identify site owner goals:
- How do the site owners make money?
- Do they have specific revenue goals? Specific growth goals?
- What do the site owners need users to do? (buy products, make donations,
click on ads)
- How many people are really likely to use the site?
- How much is it going to cost to build or revise the site? Do the benefits
really outweigh the costs?
- How will you measure success? (number of visitors, inquiries, donations,
purchases, or fines paid online)
- What is the competition doing?
Site Owner Brand Positioning
While business goals focus on how to satisfy customers, brand positioning focuses
on how to approach them.
Most people are accustomed to thinking of a brand as something specific to
consumer products, but in a broader sense, branding means associating a product
or service with core values that resonate with people.
- Brand Promise—the primary benefit that differentiates your product or service
from the competition. This is the benefit that you hope will motivate people
to act.
Consider the Red Cross website. At the top is a tagline: "Together
We Can Save a Life." The brand promise is the idea that the Red Cross
is concerned about individuals and is part of your community. Their brochures,
television commercials, and website are all designed around this premise.
- Brand attributes—the supporting benefits the customer receives from
the product or service. Brand attributes may be functional or emotional. For
example, they may help customers to feel a certain way about themselves.
- Brand personality—how the brand is communicated to customers (through
colors, image styles, typestyle, etc.)
Customers are more likely to buy or use products that are strongly branded.
That's because the decision to purchase is usually driven by emotions.
Often the only thing separating a product from its competitors is its branding.
For example, there are bottled waters marketed towards teenagers, nature
lovers, thrifty shoppers, or suave urbanites.
Use the
branding workshop tool to help
your site owners think through their branding goals.
