Focus on the purpose of your website, why does it exist, what job must it perform, how will this be managed, measured and improved, over time.
Build buyer personas, buyer journeys and create content that is customer centric.
Then design and build your website around these principles with clear and relevant metrics.
Clear objectives
Starts with strategy
Customer focused
Lead generation built in
Faster time to value
A website isn't a 'fire and forget' project, it should be part of your overall marketing strategy. It should figure in every other piece of your marketing activity whether that is social media, direct marketing, face-to-face, public relations - your website belongs at the heart of marketing strategies.
And, how you deploy the content on your website, position it and promote it, need to be part of your website strategy.
Sure, your business is the most fascinating business on the internet, aren't they all but visitors to your website don't want to hear all about you.
They are seeking a solution to some need they have, they want to know how they will benefit by engaging with you - 'what's in it for me' - if I complete that form and trade my data for your content?
Everything on your website should be placed there with careful consideration as to how it may help that visitor to satisfy the reason they came to your website.
Your website should be a tool to move a visitor, through a series of interactions, into a sales lead. It should have lead generation built into its very core and that starts by identifying the buyer journey that you want a prospect to make from the moment they arrive on your website.
Knowing this will inform how your website needs to be structured, the content needed, and how the website needs to be promoted.
Connecting your website to a capable CRM system that collects the lead data and enables it to be categorised, sorted and followed up is just as important as what the website will look like.
Rather than suffering an interminable age of design revisions and technical changes as the website is built and rolled out, what you need is the fastest route to the generation of value and by value, we mean sales leads that will convert into actual business.
The most effective way to do this is to treat your website as an ongoing project - started but never finished.
Plan, launch, campaign, measure, adapt - and repeat the last 3 until you hit your objectives.