The more clearly and specifically you define your purpose and strategy, the
more efficiently you will accomplish your goals. Whether you want to sell,
educate, entertain, persuade or provoke, every part of your site needs to
support that strategy. Your strategy should thoroughly consider a balanced
relationship between your purpose, the needs and tastes of your intended
audience, the strengths and weaknesses of your competition, and your own
available resources and capabilities. To define a good strategy, follow the
steps listed below:
Define the message you want to convey. In the case of the web site for
exotic fruits, you might want to convince people interested in healthy eating
that eating exotic fruits is exciting, healthy, and fun.
Decide how you will persuade your audience to accept your message. You
might decide to educate users on the possible uses of each fruit, to create a
lively "hip" ambiance that users will want to participate in, and to make
purchasing easy.
Select a tone. For instance, do you want to be serious and formal or fun
and more informal? Visionary or conservative? Dramatic or practical?
Identify the depth of information or the level of detail that you will
offer.
Select a visual and language presentation approach that will help you meet
your goals effectively. To appeal to an upscale audience and develop a site
that loads quickly, you might want your site to include original, lively,
high-quality flat-toned illustrations that will load faster than high-quality
photos.
Plan site features that will help you meet your goals. You might decide to
maintain a chat area where users can exchange exotic fruit stories and
recipes, an area containing interesting history on each fruit, and an
efficient ordering form.
Identify your capabilities and how they can be used to meet your goals.
For instance, does your staff have the knowledge and skills to write
interesting history articles on these fruits? Do you have the budget to pay
for high quality illustrations? Does your design and maintenance staff really
understand the communication and technical issues involved in keeping a chat
area engaging?
Set
measurable strategic goals
Set goals that will allow you to determine, once the site is complete, if it
is meeting its overall purpose. For example, you may set a goal to have a 10%
increase in sales during the first quarter after publishing your site, or to
record a certain amount of "hits" on your site. Periodically evaluate your site
using these goals, and use this evaluation to help you plan improvements.
