Thinking about your website’s purpose
Being a self-employed web developer, I’ve had quite a few “first meetings” – the first time you get together with a prospective client. While each client is obviously unique, almost all of them have fallen into a few basic stereotypes:
“Captain Apathy”
These clients are experts at running their business, but they don’t know much beyond that. Getting them to care about their marketing efforts is difficult.
Sample quote: “I don’t know anything about web sites, everyone just tells me I have to have one. So let’s just build something and get it live.”
“Obsessed with Technology”
They have done a little homework, maybe heard something on the news, and they have picked up some technology buzzwords. The downside – they will only use these terms correctly about 60% of the time.
Sample quote: “We have to use Joomla, PHP, AJAX, MySQL and JQuery. We have to have a data-driven CMS, use style sheets, and optimize everything for SEO.”
“Fashion Show”
These clients – or rather, one person within this business – are terrifically focused on how the website looks. No matter how hard you try to get them to think “content”, they will always come back to the visual.
Sample quote: “We have to have something very dynamic, lots of animation, great colors, lots of really cool pictures. It has to be very engaging.”
“Keeping Up with the Joneses”
They have seen something their competitors have done, and therefore, they have to have it too – whether or not the feature is beneficial to them or anyone else.
Sample quote: “Acme Widgets just launched a new website that has Flash and a Customize Your Widget tool. We must have this on our site now too.”
Take a deep breath…
I don’t mean to criticize these four stereotypes. These are all very easy traps to fall into – we all do it to some degree. However, once I find myself in one of these situations, I always use the same response:
“That’s great. But let’s take a step back. Let me ask you this: what do you want your website to do?”
This almost always throw them for a loop; you’d surprised how infrequently they have an answer to this question.
What’s best for your chapter?
Every Jaycee chapter is different – each one will have their own needs. It’s important to take the time to really evaluate your needs before you get started with any web efforts.
The answers to “What do you want your website to do?” will determine the type of website you build. In Part 2 of this article, we’ll go over the types of questions to ask yourself, and how that will dictate your site design.
