Do You Have a Plan, or Wait To See What Sticks?

Are you building your sites with ANY kind plan of what the website should accomplish? What kind of people might visit your new site? What type of site maintenance and updating will the website need? Or do you just get an idea and start building a site that is actually doomed from the minute you register the .com!

It’s that time of year that you need to plan your goals for 2010… and before you head haphazardly on any new project, or make any changes to an existing site on a whim, you need to answer this short series of questions in less than 15 seconds each, and model your actions around those answers! Setting your Website Goals will come much easier when you know the purpose of why you are doing it!

If you already have an active website, give it a realistic once-over and see how well it fits into the answers you provide!

6 Questions To Start Every Website Plan

Write your answers down on a sheet of paper and keep it handy from the first day you start planning a new project! Refer to it every month, to see if your efforts are supporting your original goals.

• What is The Primary Function of Your Website or Online Business?

  You need to KNOW the purpose of your website or it will be impossible for you to go any further. The answer should roll through your mind immediately, without ever thinking too hard about it! For example, if you plan to build, or already run a site about copper faucets, your primary purpose may be to Help Visitors Compare Prices and find the Best Deals on Copper Faucets.

• Exactly WHO Are the Target Visitors of Your Site?

  Just like the first question, you should have an immediate answer to this question! Whether your site is designed for buyers with a credit card in hand, or a person simply looking for more information about a product or service, Who are your ideal visitors? In the case of the Copper Faucet site, the target visitor would be a prospective buyer ready to purchase the best value that meets their needs.

• Exactly HOW Will You Earn Income From Those Visitors?

  Assuming you do everything right and you get targeted visitors to your new website, how will those visitors translate into income for you? Does it involve buying a product you refer them to? Will you be selling a product or service of your own? Exactly what actions do those visitors need to take in order for you to hear the cash register ring? Again, with the copper faucet site, you may need visitors to go through a checkout process to buy items you recommend, click on your advertiser links, or buy an e-book or guide you have created.

These first three points should dictate almost every aspect of your website design, layout, and the content you have on the site! When you are planning new sections or pages for the website, they should directly support these three points in one way or another!

• How Many Visitors Will You Need to Survive?

  Now that you have targeted visitors coming to the site and buying your product, recommendations, or service, exactly how many of them do you need to repeat that same process every month, in order to reach the income goals you set for the site? Do you need 100, 500, 1000, more? Keep in mind that a visitor and a buyer are two completely different types! If your site converts at an overall rate of 3%, that means only 3 out of every 100 visitors are actually supporting your efforts and buying something.

  If you have a goal of $1000/month in earnings, and each conversion is worth $1 to you, that means you need to convert at least 1000 of your visitors into performing the required action to earn that $1. If you convert at an overall rate of 10%, you will need to attract at least 10,000 visitors/month to reach your goal!

• Name Three Ways You Plan to Attract Those Visitors, If Search Engines Did Not Exist!

  Be specific! Are you going to network with other websites where those visitors are likely to visit? Are you going to run banner advertising? Are you going to have a company handle article marketing and promotion of your site for you? Are you going to become a guest writer on other websites, attracting readers to yours? Maybe you hope to get the visitors that do come to the site, to help you spread the word?

  Organic search engine traffic is great, but unless you have a well rounded marketing plan in place, its also very temporary and most important, unpredictable! EVERY person below you in the search rankings will be doing whatever THEY can do, to surpass your listing in organic search results!

The above answers should form the foundation of your marketing efforts! You know how many visitors you need and you have a basic plan on how you are going to get them! Everything you do outside of your own website, should revolve around attracting X number of visitors, without any search engine traffic!

If you are able to attract just HALF of your overall targeted visitors without search engines, you will eventually rank in the top end of organic results, and exceed your goals considerably!

• How Long Will You Give 100% Effort Before You Abandon the Project?

  We all have a breaking point in which we see less than desirable results for our efforts, completely lose interest, and walk away. I could point you to at least 5 projects of my own that are floating around aimlessly, completely neglected for several months. If you build more than 3-5 sites, you will too!

  Be honest with yourself when you answer and make sure you understand that if you don’t make it to this point, the project did not fail for any other reason, except your failure to see it through, and follow your plan along the way!

Finally – What Do You Consider Your Biggest Challenge?

We all have that one thing that we like to blame as a reason for failure. Whether its… I don’t rank good enough in search engines, to I cannot write content around this topic, there is one thing we always use as the main reason a project did not succeed!

What is the Number 1 Reason You have Failed on a Project?

Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:

• Plan to Build Your First Niche Store – The Right Way!
• Please read if you plan to update v2 sites to v3

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