Strategic Planning for Website Content

Most people say to me they want a basic website. It consists of a homepage, one or two theme content pages, a services page, a resources page, then an about page and contact page. This may seem fairly normal, but the problem is that it is from the website owner's perspective. The visitor's perspective may be very different.

Be found

Anything online is at the will of the visitor. The visitor's perspective defines whether a website is found and visited. First, of course the website must be found on the search engine pages that the visitor happens to be  selecting. Then the website must word its title so the visitor is interested in the content.

Be desirable

Your visitor arrives at your website. Any door may be the chosen entrance. The homepage is only the most frequently found, but not the only one. Every doorway needs to welcome its visitors.

Be usable

Once visitors come to the first page they see, they need to know what the website is about and how they can find what they are searching for. We must direct them clearly to the topics covered. We can assume very little, other than they usually take about 3 seconds to decide if this website is useful to them.

The Strategic Process

This is the beginning of our marketing research and planning.

• We take nothing for granted.
• We research the terms and phrases your most visitors might use to find you.
• We discuss the themes and topics of their interests.
• We build content based on these interests.
• We develop website pages and articles based on these interests.
• We develop this into a comprehensive organization with a homepage.
• We carefully name all pages based on the content topic.