The Most Important Question BEFORE You Build a Website

Yet again, I was having a familiar discussion with a new client and was going over the most important question in building a new online product. Very often a client understands the importance of website for business, however has no clear idea of the biggest part of it:

WHAT IS A REASON FOR THIS PARTICULAR WEBSITE TO BE BUILD?

In other words:

In what way this product will help a website's owner to run business?

How it will be used?

What value it can provide?

For instance a website can be used as communication hub with clients, saving money and helping the offline part of the project to function; the website can be focused on creating of improving brand presence (could be a website's owner online image as a brand); it could be focused on generating direct sales, or providing tools for facilitating and supporting sales...

The opportunities are endless and combinations of them are even more diverse.

However it is very important to have a clear vision of how the website will be utilized and what will be it's focus. That will dictate EVERYTHING: the design approach, the layout, the UI, and most importantly choices in terms of functional elements and even hosting solutions.

Basically you can look at your site as yet another employee, who can help you with specific bottlenecks in your process and to improve and expand everywhere else, and do this 24/7, working with hundreds of customers if necessary. However, you need to know exactly how this person can help your company before you begin to go through resumes. The beauty of it with a right service provider you can craft this "employee" exactly in a way that works the best instead of settling for the closest approximation.

Make sure to choose one with the right "set of skills"