420 Design Blog
Knowing your site
20 Aug 2007 | Angie H
Too many businesses -- small and large alike -- have a website just to have one. Unfortunately that just doesn’t cut it anymore. The novelty of having a website isn’t much of a novelty anymore. In business it’s pretty much a necessity in the same ways overall advertising and marketing are. So your company’s website can’t be sub-par if it’s going to get its share of the pie. But it can’t be great if you don’t know what it’s for.
Knowing what kind of website your company should have or has is just as important as having one at all. I’m not referring to aesthetics at all this time though. By “kind of website”, I don’t mean “simple”, “green”, or “really snazzy.” What I’m referring to is the overall objective of your site.
There are six categories that sites fall into. Some sites fall into more than one. In fact, most sites probably do fall into more than one even if their owners don’t know it. Knowing which one(s) apply to your site will give you an edge on a myriad of things such as the overall tone, its primary message, its structure and yes, even its look and feel.
Web-Based Sales
This is an easy one. If you’ve set up shop on the Web then you’re likely in this category. In other words, if your revenue comes primarily or wholly from online sales, then this is where your site lives. Think Amazon. No brick and mortar store to go to - their site is it. They want nothing more than for you to fill that virtual shopping cart full of books, music and other items.
Offline Sales
The Voda Vodka Bar and Restaurant, or Portland’s own Blue Hour are perfect examples of this kind of site. The whole point of those sites is to provide enough information to get you to physically go to their places of business.
Lead Generating
Most sites fall under this, but there are some that this is all their site is for. A viewer goes to the site, leaves their contact information and later she gets contacted by someone. Salesforce.com is a good example of this type of site.
Market Awareness
There are sites whose sole objective is to provide information about a company, or more likely, an organization such as the Make a Wish Foundation or Doernbecher. They don’t necessarily want you to purchase something, but they want to make you and plenty of other people aware of what they do.
Informative / Entertainment
Then there are sites like the New York Times, Macworld, YouTube and MySpace. These sites are purely to provide information about other topics and/or to provide entertainment.
Influence / Persuasion
MoveOn.org and SaveTheInternet.com are perfect examples of sites whose objectives are merely to influence and persuade you. That is, they want to try to change your mind (or make up your mind) about a particular topic.
Just browsing the Web you’ll start to notice that most sites are a combinations of these categories, or themes. That’s just the nature of business. But the companies that know which categories their site falls or should fall under will have a higher success rate simply because it will help craft and target your message to the right audience. Do you know what kind of site you have?