In today’s newsletter I want to talk about my process for building a website. And why it’s not the actual website.

Here’s what we’re going to cover:

- Always start with strategy
- Know your audience
- Make the plan easy

Most websites I see today are thrown together last minute. With someone in the business yelling, “we need to get the site live, NOW!”. But once you understand that what makes a website effective is what happens before going live, then you will start seeing results.

Let’s dive in!

Spend more planning the website than building it

In order to create a website that works, you first need to make sure you don’t make a few of the most common mistakes:

- Thinking you can wing it
- Waiting too late to begin the website process
- Just throwing something together and saying you’ll make it better later (you won’t)

The reason people tend to make these mistakes is because they don’t believe the website can be that effective. And as a result, they keep themselves stuck believing the website is a nice to have and can’t really help their business.

So, here’s how I approach this process with all of my clients:

Start with a strategy

If you’re starting with the website, your website will fail.

Why? Because the website will only amplify the message and strategy you have in place. If there is none, a poor website will make you look unprofessional.

See the website, is there to serve a specific purpose. It’s a tool, that needs to be used like one.

When starting with a strategy, make sure everyone is aligned on these questions:

- What’s the websites singular goal?
- Who is the website speaking to?
- What’s the exact user experience you want someone to take?
- How are you going to nurture prospects who aren’t ready to buy yet?
- How are you going to capture emails?
- What value are you providing to your ideal customer?
- Are you speaking to your ideal clients biggest pain problem?
- How many problems is the website solving? (1-2 max)

When you start with strategy, you have a plan.

It’s like driving your car.

You don’t get in the car hoping to end up at your destination. You create a plan or have a way to ensure you get to your destination. A car can be a great resource for transportation, but if you don’t know where you’re going—it’s useless.

Know your audience

How well do you know your target audience?

- What is their biggest problem?
- How does that problem make them feel internally?
- Does your solution solve that problem?
- What transformation are they looking for after using your service/product?

Don’t assume you know your audience. If you can’t confidently answer these questions, you need to go talk to your customers more.

This applies for businesses that are just getting started and ones that have been established for years. It doesn’t matter. You have to know who you are speaking to.

Make the plan easy

People don’t like friction.

So your goal with the website is to remove it.

How can you have a frictionless website? Make whatever actions you want them to take, easy.

This is the best way to ensure your prospects buy from you.

You are designing the roadmap with your website. You create the user experience. Do it intentionally and you can have a lead-generating engine of a website. Do it unintentionally and you will end up with a website that makes you look unprofessional and make people not want to work with you.

Minimize friction, and you will see better results.

What’s next?

These are the exact questions I use when helping clients prep for a website. You need to spend a large amount of time thinking about these things before thinking about what the design is going to look like.

Most businesses make the mistake by thinking they can do this while they build. They can’t. It doesn’t work that way.

So, spend time upfront working through this. The website is not a last minute project. It’s a tool in the marketing collateral tool belt.

Use it as such and you will see huge business growth!

See you next week.

Luke