In the websites business, Strategy is king.
Purpose, Rewards, and Objectives are all vital for a truly successful web business. However, you can often do those for a group of businesses, but you cannot take shortcuts with strategy. Every web business must have its strategy. Every website must have it’s blueprint.
The blueprint lists all key search phrases that are relevant to your chosen market areas. It structures those key-phrases into groups that reflect each market area you have included in your web business Purpose. It is the vital template that nobody in the websites business can do without.
My use of the word ‘template’ should not be confused with the WordPress templates that control how content is displayed on the page. Traditional use of a template is to guide the production process, ensuring accurate results that comply with the design. That is exactly what you are building during the strategy phase, so call it a blueprint, a template or a strategic plan. Whatever you call it, you cannot start producing a website without one.
The only time you can get away without one is if you are building a network of web businesses, and one site is simply summarizing or supporting other sites in the network. In that case, your site structure should be based on the existing sites, so you certainly cannot manage without a strategic site template somewhere. In fact, that support site is not a web business in it’s own right – unless your Objective is to earn you own money by supporting or summarizing other successful, well-structured sites.
In this section, I cover many different web business models. I cover the details of each model in the Objectives section, but most rely on attracting referred traffic from search engines or other links.
Before you think this is another Search Engine Optimization (SEO) process, it is not. It is part of Visitor Experience Optimization (VEO). The first part, in fact, since you cannot optimize the visitor experience until you have some visitors. The cheapest way to attract them is to attract natural search. The only way to retain them as loyal, returning customers and prospects is to maintain a site structure that lets them know what your business is about and encourages them to bring you revenue.
If you have a large budget, you can quickly get a clear picture of what visitors are currently searching for by advertising online and analyzing the results. Unfortunately, this is very expensive, and it means your early content has no structure, or one you merely guessed at.
As a priority, I explain the requirements for natural search referrals and productive network links. I’ll keep adding articles to the list for procedures that are relevant to other business models. If you have a pressing need for information on something I have not covered yet, please let me know, as I always prioritize with reference to specific requests from my visitors.
- Websites Business Template: Strategic Targets
- Websites Business Template: Demand Assessment
- Websites Business Template: Strategic Structure
- Websites Business Template: Review & Refinement
- Websites Business Template: Timescale & Targets (optional)
My free update service can tell you when I add more pages to this series. Keep in-touch by subscribing on the form above.
Do you have questions about Web Business Strategies? Please discuss any issues or questions about pre-production website planning at Discuss Strategies For Web Business. For other questions about web business management, please use the appropriate discussion page.