What’s the purpose of your website? This seems like a silly question to ask, but most small business owners don’t have a solid answer. To succeed, we need a clear goal.
Business websites will generally have one of the following primary goals:
- Generate leads, gain readers, or build subscribers: You want users to enter their information and sign up for something to facilitate future interaction.
- Establish credibility for a person or organization: You want to increase the reputation and make a good impression of a person or organization.
- Sell products or services: You want to sell a product or service to the customer. This includes buying a product, booking an appointment, or subscribing to a service to name a few.
What’s your goal?
You can have more than one goal, but most small businesses focus on the last one and use their website to sell products and services to customers. As a secondary goal, some (the smart ones) will ask customers to sign up for a newsletter or something similar to make more sales in the future.
Know the goal of your website, it shapes everything your business does. If there’s something on your website that doesn’t move customers towards that goal, get rid of it, it’s a distraction.