The Purpose of a Website

Last week I revealed that I got a new website and I couldn’t be happier. For me, my website is my home base and one of my main selling tools. My products are words, so I need to package them up with a beautiful bow and that’s exactly what we did (thank you, Sarah!).

I always tell people that a website can serve one of two main purposes--a traffic director or a brochure. For me, it’s the latter. I treat my website like my brochure, or my sales presentation if you will. In other words, people are going to our website because they have been sent there (by me or someone I know). My website is social proof that we are not just a legit business, but we are great writers for a specific type of client.? It’s a way for people to get to know more about us and confirm that they want to do business with us, or at the very least meet us if they haven’t already.

The people going to our website are more mid-funnel if you want to use marketing terms. They are already aware of us in some capacity, and that’s by design. 100% of our clients are referrals, personal connections, or people who found me on LinkedIn and already know about me. So, when they go to the website, they are merely looking for more information about working with me or my team.

If our website was more of a traffic director, the audience would be much more top of the funnel. People who know very little about us and are looking for a very specific service and came to us through an internet search. The goal of this type of website is more awareness. The objective is to get people to stay on the website and learn more, so they will take the first step and set-up time.?

The goal in both cases, or truly any website is to get business. And going one step further, in both cases, the goal should also be to detract the wrong clients.

That said, the purpose of the website changes based on how you get business. So that means two things:

1) The people that use their website as traffic directors have more traffic than me (duh!) but likely a smaller conversion rate. I have much lower traffic but a higher conversation rate.

?2) It also means the words we use on the website match that purpose. How so? Right now, our website isn’t heavy on the sell. The focus of our website is truly showcasing our work. If we were trying to woo newcomers, we’d probably have a bit heavier of a hand with the sales language and the SEO (search engine optimization) language. We’d probably have more lead magnets and push harder on the newsletter sign-ups. If we ever wanted to focus more on driving traffic through Google, we’d tweak the narrative.

Now, this theory isn’t mutually exclusive. Sure, people may find me through Google (hi!). And of course, traffic director websites can act as brochures. In fact, most traffic director websites usually do double-duty because even businesses that focus on SEO as a sales strategy meet leads organically at some point. And this double-duty/overlap theory also applies to large consumer products websites, like Amazon or Target. Of course, you’ve heard of those companies already and you’re probably plugging the website in rather than doing a search (the brochure). But, they do need you to stay on the website and make your purchase with them (traffic director). For that reason, the language is more sales-focused.

For me, the brochure status works. That may change as my business grows, and if that’s the case, I’d be sure to make the right language and visual tweaks.

What do you think? Are there other purposes for websites? What does your website do?

Need help writing copy for your brochure or traffic director website? Send me a message! Let’s see if I can help.

This originally appeared on my blog: The Purpose of A Website — Lauren Perna Communications