It is important to know and understand the purpose of your website and to do that you need to understand your organisation’s purpose. If you assess your organisation’s needs, you may find your website develops in unexpected directions. In this post, I address the third issue that tends to cause organisations to lose sight of their website’s purpose.
Many people think of their website as an advert because they are not aware of what they can do for their organisation, . They have a website because everyone has one and it offers credibility. They can give people their website address where they can go and find out more about the organisation.
This may be all a small businesses needs. However, it is one option available after considering all the options and must not be your default option.
So, why do organisations fail to consider all the options? A lot of it is about mindsets. People have seen and want to copy certain sites, perhaps belonging to organisations similar to theirs. This perpetuates poor designs across dozens of sites. Finding a new direction requires investment of a lot of time and can be threatening, particularly if a lot of time and money has been already been invested in a poor design.
There’s No Point in Advertising
If you are in a competitive market, you will need to do more than simply advertise your presence. Even if you mainly drive business through off-line means, eg business cards, flyers, announcements at meetings; your competitors can still do better if they offer more through their sites.
The issue here is traffic and conversions. An organisation in a competitive market that drives the most relevant traffic to their site and then get visitors to respond will do best.
Websites are not like traditional advertising hoardings, where many people walk or drive past and see the advert. Very few people see most websites unless they take steps to drive people to them. What they find on arrival will decide whether they maintain contact and return to your site.
Not all sites are designed for new visitors. Some sites are for members; they correspond with members and add content for the benefit of members. A local group, for example, might do most of its recruiting through personal contacts and needs a site to aid communication. They may be a community group whose members need information about their neighbourhood for example.
But the type of site that simply tells the world some organisation exists is not going to recruit members or attract subscribers. A lot of time and energy can go into sites that drain resources from the organisation. How many organisations use their site to effect change and not to simply tell the world they exist?
Not a Load of Old Minutes
Some organisations seem to think there is interest in their old minutes. There isn’t. Neither are visitors interested in mission statements or arcane discussions about the area the organisation covers or such matters.
If you need to share these things with your members use an email list, a members’ area or perhaps a blog post. Definitely keep this stuff well away from the home page.
Your website is not a filing cabinet. It is a communications tool and you need to learn to use it for that purpose. Why do you think your filing cabinet’s content is what visitors want to read?
What we see on such sites is a design failure. Yes, I know its content but content is a part of your design. Whoever designs your site, be it in-house or external really has to understand the purpose of the site. It is never a matter of bunging up a template and hanging a few baubles on it. Your content needs to be good copy that will draw people to your site.
The Second Visit
The question many organisations need to ask is: why would anyone visit this site for a second time?
If there is no reason then the question becomes: why do you invest time and effort into something that is not designed to attract return visitors? For a few organisations there may be a positive reason but that is not an excuse for poor design.
Brochure sites aim to add credibility to an organisation and perhaps to enable a once and for all response. Even that limited ambition requires design. If someone visits because they’ve got your business card, what do you want them to do?
If you’re selling wedding dresses you may not expect people to pass through your site more than once. But you still have competitors and need to persuade the visitor to decide to run with your organisation.
You need good content including social proof and you need a strong call to action. The potential to improve your site’s performance is there even for this type of one-off business.
Where you do need return visits you will need to do more. To work out what you need to do you must understand your organisation and what it needs to achieve online.
Know Your Purpose
These are three examples showing what happens where organisations do not think through their purpose and default to thinking of their site as an advert. Knowing your purpose is central to good site design and next time I shall explain why.
