The most important thing you must do your your website is something that very, very few website owners and wannabe’s do before building their websites. This is often the difference between success and failure.
First Identify the Need
If you don’t have a need, you don’t have a website. Before starting to build a website take a minute to state your exact needs by establishing your audience (I sometimes refer to audience as Actors) and their goals.
Need = Audience + Goals.
Your Audience are the groups of people that you would expect to be using your site. Be specific here! Avoid generalities such as “someone” or “anyone.” The specific audience types should correlate tightly to your business’s sweet spot – those archetypes of prospects that turn into your most profitable customers.
Goals are what those actors wish to do. Remember that marketing phrase “No one ever really buys a hammer; they buy the thought of the picture hanging in the wall.” We want to make it as easy as possible for your website visitor to see themselves using your service or product and realizing the value that they are searching for.
Ex. Actor 1 – Bob
Bob is a wildlife photography buff and a recent empty-nester looking for information about photo safaris.
Ex. Actor 2 – Mary
Mary is a 25 year old bride-to-be looking for someone local to take engagement photos of her and her fiance on Lake Norman.
You get the point.
Which Actors to Chose
Of course you can’t spend all of your time diagramming your audience. To start with I suggest beginning with your top 3 kinds of clients. Those would be your favorite ones. The ones you really enjoyed working with and have made your company viable. This will focus your website efforts on the highest priority customers first. It will be the profits from those critical few that will help you expand your site later on to reach even more prospects.
Homework
Take the time now and write down a single sentence of 3 actors and their goals that will be using your website. If you’d like, share them in the comments and I’ll tell you what I think. My future articles will rely heavily on you having performed this exercise so it’s crucial you have. Any questions or thoughts to share? Please do so in the comments below. I love feedback! Thanks, Ted.
