Your website mission

Are you true to your website mission?

Every website has a mission. Something it needs to achieve above all else. Even if your website mission is not formally understood, or often discussed, it still exists. Generally, your website mission is the measure by which you will decide whether your website is a success or a failure.

What do I mean by a website mission? Well, let's say you run a service based business and you have already built a website or are planning to do so. There will be something you intend it to achieve for your business. Chances are your website mission is to "produce qualified leads for my business".

A website mission can be anything, but for most Australian businesses it will fall into one of the following categories:

• Generating leads
• Generating online sales (i.e. making sales from the website itself
• Generating offline sales (i.e. generating sales that are completed offline)
• Providing customer service
• Building reputation / trust
• Distributing information

This is not an exhaustive list - but you get the picture. Your website mission might even include more than one of these items. Seems pretty obvious right? But why is this important to you? And how can you use this concept to your advantage?

You should only include items on your website that will increase the chance of you fulfilling your mission. Even more importantly you must stay away from those items that will actively work against you.

For example, let's say you are building a website where the mission is to distribute information to a group of busy professionals. Your developer comes up with a breathtaking flash movie people will view before they reach your homepage. It will make you look really cool and may impress some of your more artistic users. However, you have to ask, will it assist people in getting the information they are coming to your site for? Most likely it will not. Will it frustrate some people when using your site? I should think so. What should you say to your enthusiastic developer? Not for me thanks.

It is never too late to develop a website mission. If you already have a website I urge you to spend some time thinking about how your website can best serve your business. With this information in hand you should review your website and analyse each and every feature, function and design element. Which of these are working for you? Which are simply filling space? Which are actively working against you? What sort of results is your website delivering to your business? Is it as successful as you need it to be? If not where could it be more closely aligned with its mission? Is there something missing from your website?

What is your website mission? What has helped you to achieve it? What has stopped you? Are you, and everyone else working on your website, on the same page - are you even reading from the same book?