Did you need to build a website for your business but you don’t know how to build it and get the results you’re looking for?
Do you have a website but it doesn’t convey the image of your company well?
Perhaps your website is not getting the right traffic and it’s costing you more money than it is making?
Or perhaps it’s not functioning the way you would like it to and the user experience is not good?
There is a simple reason why and in today’s podcast and transcript I’m going to share with you how to solve these problems and build a website that has purpose and gets results.
Transcript: Building a Website that Has Purpose and Gets Results
This week I am continuing on the theme of websites. A lot of you out there are thinking to yourself, “I need to build a website or my website isn’t cutting it and I need a new one.”
But, you’re concerned that if you build a website that it will just be more of the same… money down the drain, no new prospects, more confusion and a bad user experience that is hurting your company’s image and reputation, it could be any number of things that concern you.
(June 01, 2016), I talked specifically about how to hire the right web designer and on Monday I talked about how to create a website that will inspire more sales.
Today, I want to talk about how to discover the purpose of a website and how it ties into your business goals and the different types of websites that you can be built to meet your needs that you may not have given thought to.
There are a lot of different types of websites and most of us don’t think about how each website has its own individual purpose or need in alignment with your business model, and those needs will determine what type of website you should build.
There are five core purposes of a website:
- Information
- Education
- Marketing
- Sales or e-commerce
- Combination of two or more of the above
Many business owners build a website without understanding the purpose of a website.
Perhaps you’re one of them?
Perhaps you’re making some assumptions about what you think it is?
The more you understand what the purpose of your website is the more you can create the right website that will offer you out what you need and want.
There are so many different things that can make up a website and inform what it can do.
It takes the right set of skills and knowledge to build a website and understand your business, your processes and systems, your prospects and customers and align those things to create the right purpose for your website so that the user experience is exceptional.
One Way to Incorporate All Four Core Purposes Into a Website
I’m getting ready to build a website for two clients, interestingly enough, where both purposes are educational and informational at their core. Both these sites will feature a membership or subscription where people will pay for access to high-quality information for one and specific industry training videos for another.
In order to build a website that will be successful, all purposes will have to be present… marketing, the ability for the consumer to pay online to access the content, and then the content that will serve as either educational or informational, or both.
More businesses of all types, and website owners, are beginning to realize that they are creating amazing content for free that they should be getting paid for. People love and are drawn to websites that:
- Solve a specific problem
- Meet a specific need
- Or fulfill a specific desire
And… their customers are willing to pay for it.
In a membership or subscription website that encompasses all of the above, you can go deeper and more specific with your content and yes, people will actually pay you a passive income for the right to keep accessing your content.
It’s a great way to scale and expand any business.
The cool thing about a membership type site is that you build it once and you get paid for it over and over, and over again… and like I said its purpose is really all four of the core types of websites above.
If you want to have a really great opportunity to build a passive income, membership sites can be a fantastic way to go and there are all shapes and types of membership sites to build.
Some Membership Sites are:
- Informational
- Educational
- Are in video format
- Are in audio format
- Are in text format
- Or a combination of any of the above
Membership sites are just one way that you could build a passive income.
No matter what your business is I think can build a website with a membership or subscription with some out-of-the-box thinking.
These are especially good for service based businesses.
I’ve never understood why a number of the service-based businesses don’t build a website with this capability.
For example, why couldn’t an insurance agency, an independent insurance agency, build a website with a membership or subscription that’s for a specific segmentation they might do business with on a regular basis?
If you really know your audience and you drill down well, and you’re a resource… and that’s the key… your website can be an extremely valuable tool.
And, because it’s a profit making asset for your business, it holds value in the valuation of your company if you ever choose to sell it or get financing.
I Don’t Want To Build a Website with a Subscription… What Else Should I Consider?
Maybe you don’t need a membership or subscription website. Maybe you just need to build a website that communicates your message relevantly. Perhaps it has a blog, some video or maybe even a podcast like mine?
For example, my website is a combination of information, education and marketing.
I used to create text-based articles that were 2,000 or maybe 2,500 word articles and include a short video and an audio of the blog people could listen to on the site or download and listen later on the device of their choosing.
What I decided it is after doing that for about four months, I was seeing a huge amount of downloads of the audio.
People seemed to prefer the audio over the text.
I’m going take a guess, I don’t know this to be hundred percent certain but I’m pretty sure about this, people preferred to download the audio over read the text because they can listen whenever they want, wherever they are… they could be at the gym, in the car, on the subway, or even on a plane. They can be sitting around waiting for a meeting or making dinner; whatever the case may be.
What I’ve chosen to do is instead of writing an article and create a short podcast around it is to make a podcast and then transcribe that into text that I can use as part of the blog.
If people want to listen they can listen and if they want to read the text they can read the text of the transcript.
How Do Build a Website with Purpose?
The key to knowing the purpose of your website and what type of website to build is to know the business that you are “really” in.
If you know what business you are “really” in, then it’s so much easier to know what the purpose of your website will be and what kind of website you will need.
If you understand the business that you’re in, if understand who your audience is, and if you understand the problems, needs, or desires you’re solving or fulfilling; it becomes really easy to get your head around what type of website you need and the purpose of it.
Then you can build a website that accomplishes the goal of whatever it is that you’re trying to do.
It could be that you want to:
- Attract new prospects
- Increase sales
- Make the user experience better
- Relevantly reflect your products or services
- Introduce a new business or product into the marketplace
- Provide information that people need to be aware of
- Share with your customers what’s happening in your business
- Become a resource for your prospects or customers
You have to figure out what the purpose is and then build a website around it in order to provide real value to your audience.
There’s one other thing to think about here…
How do you build an online community of loyal followers?
You ought to be building a community of people, through your website, that are coming back to it over and over again and who are consuming your content and sharing with people that they know in their networks.
Why?
Two reasons…
Reason one is because they will tell you if your website is matching up with your purpose or not. They will tell you want they need, want and desire and that kind of information is invaluable!
Second, because who do people hang out with?
They hang out with people that are just like themselves so naturally if the purpose of your website matches up with their problems, needs, wants or desires it will with their friends as well; and they will be inclined to spread your message and business.
How are you building a community and providing value for one another?
How does your website do that?
That’s a need that you have that you probably haven’t even thought about.
Conclusion
What is the purpose of your website?
What do you want your website to do?
Are you ready to build a website with purpose:
- Informational
- Educational
- Marketing
- E-commerce or sales
- Combination one of the above
You can build a website a lot easier if you know what business you’re “really” in and define the purpose of your website.
You may not be getting the results you want from your website if you aren’t sure how to really use your website.
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