Before embarking on re-designing and re-building your marketing website it may well pay to do a little ‘website planning’ first. Assuming that the primary purpose of your business website is to market the products and services of your business to potential and existing customers there are two main questions that you will need to be clear on before proceeding.
1. What do you want your Website to say?
Normally, you will want your business website to clearly spell out the main benefits of your products and/or services. Ideally this will be done in a language and style that will engage the types of customer groups that your business serves.
2. Who do you want your Website to say it to?
The marketing website is for your customers. What types of people are they? Can your customer base be categorised into distinct groups? Are your customer groups buying the same or different prducts and services? Do they buy for the same or different reasons?
Identify target customer groups and associated products and services
What do we do next?
Well, there is still more planning work to do. Beyond these two questions there are further steps in a website planning process (see the article ‘Planning the Perfect Website‘, by MintTwist, for further detail on this subject), however the process becomes far easier and the end result will be far more effective with clarity on what we want to say and who we want to say it to.
How does planning help design?
A website homepage will push the core messages in a design that will enage our core customer groups. However it’s most important function is to quickly and clearly direct the website visitor (potential customer) to the product or service page that is most relevant for them.
By breaking down the products and services by customer group and at the same time having a good understanding of the benefits that are most relevant to each group we will be able to design product and service pages that will enable us to focus our communication towards the needs of our potential customer, increase engagement and ultimately increase sales leads and revenue.
This article is based on the “MintTwist Method” for Website planning. MintTwist is an International Web Agency with offices in London, Dubai, Switzerland, Italy and Portugal.
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