Like everything else, as small business owners we can use our resources more effectively if we have a clear vision of what we want to achieve with our website web site. For starters, it is easier to draw a plan of action when we have a defined goal. The plan may change, and our original goal may be proceeded by the pursue of a new found opportunities. Yet, beginning with the end in mind, will prompt us to judge what works and what doesn’t. And hopefully, resource allocation decisions will be obvious to us.

The goal of a website web site may be generation of leads, selling a product, selling services, research, creating a community, monetizing content, branding, informing an audience, education, you name it. Our goal is our starting point, and the definition of this spells our next step. The development of our plan will be lead by the results we gather at every step of the way, whether these are research, implementation, or a mile stone.

This is a scenario: Veronica has started her own small business. She sells web services through her own website web site. She wants to generate sales through her website web site.

Having established the generation of sales through the website web site as the goal may prompt us this as the first question: how do others generate sales through a website web site? (Do you see how the goal is spelling the plan of action?) I choose to recourse to the internet to find how others achieve sales through their websites web sites.

And so I search for the phrase: “I generate sales through my website web site.”  Of the results that google’s search engine listed for me, I picked 3 web pages I felt were more likely to provide relevant information.

The first result is telling me that I need to increase traffic to my website web site, identify and choose strategic keywords that are related to my products and services, use these words in the content of my website web site, get noticed by search engines, and get some inbound links from sites that reach the same audience I am trying to reach.

Many of the results listed by google included the heading of generate leads through your website web site, and so I concluded that generation of leads is one of the steps to generate sales through my website web site. And so the second website web site I selected emphasizes the visitor’s experience as they navigate a website web site. The site suggests that I create a website web site in which visitors want to spend time, trust, and want to build a relationship with.

The third website web site I selected talks about the copy right; the writing that describes the products and services. And it suggests various tactics to attract the attention of visitors.

The preliminary research helps us establish a basic framework from which we can continue to build upon. Once again, just as when we first define our website’s web site's goal, our finding lead the way for our next step. It is important to sift and rearrange our findings as we move from one stage to the next. And I have categorized and sub-categorized the findings in the following manner:

• inside the website web site
  • have a website web sitewhere visitors want to spend more time.
    • good copyright
    • write about relevant subjects
    • establish a relationship through your website web site (returning visitors)
  • build trust
• outside of the website web site:
  
  • drive traffic to website web site
    • generate inbound links
    • get noticed by search engines

Once again, these findings lead us to do more research, and so on. It is important to identify how we’ll recognize results. Perhaps we set a time every so often in which look for evidence of results. Are we getting visitors to our website web site?  Some results are more obvious than others. For example, if a visitor subscribes to your newsletter this is clear evidence that  a visitor felt comfortable enough to provide you with his/her email. Google analytics provides some useful statistics. You could use this as an introductory tool to keep track of visitors. I suggest to schedule systematic review of all of our efforts to gain insight and gain clues as to how we can improve our plan. Rate which tactics work better than others, and what does not work et all. This is important specially for time management. If one of the tactics generates zero results, focus on the tactics that have generated results. Fine tune the process until you achieve the goal.

In short, if you are investing resources from your small business to a website web site, have a clear goal in mind. Imagine that you had a magic wand and you could get anything you wanted. Set that as your starting point to develop your plan of action.