Hi All,

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged as I have been busy at Webtron working on lot’s of interesting projects.

In this blog I will examine Website Strategy.

We are currently helping a lot of companies develop their Website Strategy. By this I don’t mean web design. For professional corporate companies web design should only result as an outcome of a detailed Website Strategy Analysis.

Website Strategy - Your first step to successful website development

Define your goal
Before you start doing anything for your website, please think about what you really want to achieve from this website. This is so important because it will be used to form a general guideline for all future work. If you sailing in the sea, the strategy is to look for the lighthouse that will help lead you to the destination. So, clearly define your destination is the very first step.

There are few ways to define your goal. The easiest method is to describe your future status – what you think your website should be in the future, say in 2 years time. At Webtron for example we took an even longer view in defining our website goal. We imagined what it would look like in 5 years! You may also think about your business strategy, and align the goal with your business objective/s.

Once you have finished that, you need to evaluate whether it is an achievable goal. Today’s competitive environment makes many goals unachievable. You will need to be careful about your goal. Several tools can help you at this stage: a basic SWOT analysis or Port’s five forces framework would be a possible choice.

Now you can generate a roadmap to achieve that goal
There are some key questions you may ask yourself.

1. What’s your business plan? How you plan to achieve your business goal?
2. What’s your competitive advantage? In other words, what’s your unique value for your customers?
3. What’s your core competence, your unique way to run your business that drives success?

By answering those questions, you should be able to know yourself better. Your website strategy should conform to your key advantages.

Understand your market
Again, there are some questions that need to be addressed.

1. What’s the market? It is a simple question, but difficult to answer correctly. For example, would you consider Parker pens market to be the writing instrument industry or gift industry?
2. Market size? Market share distribution? There are a number of companies that can provide this information. It looks hard to estimate; but in reality, it may be the easiest one to acquire – purchase it!

Know your customer
This is the most important point. There are too many ways to analyses consumer behaviours. I would only recommend some of them here. However, you must carefully choose the method of analysis, because most of them will have certain limitations.

1. Market research. On the market, there are various market research companies that provide ‘package’ of analysis. However, market research rarely reveals the ‘true’ information. People don't tell you what they will do (and they can’t!).
2. From professionals, such as people from the design laboratory. They know how to create a product for customers; but usually what they are missing is the ‘marketing’ view. A company need not create the best product, but the most suitable product.

Webtron is a professional service company that is able to deliver your company a comprehensive website strategy plan. Our satisfaction guaranteed service will help your company better achieve your business goal.

For more information, please CONTACT STRATEGY MANAGER MR. CHEN FENG OR DIRECTOR MR. ALEX HILL.