What’s the Purpose of your website?

What is the purpose of your website? Why should it exist? Why should people use it?

These are all the same question. And it’s the most important question to ask before building a website. If you cannot answer this question then your website will serve no meaningful purpose.

In this article, I will help you understand why defining a website’s purpose clearly and accurately is one of the keys to its success, and how to define one for your website easily.

Why you need to understand your website’s purpose clearly.

Defining your website’s purpose will determine its primary role in your overall business strategy.

The purpose informs the value proposition, which is a statement that is typically displayed on a site. It will clarify the URL navigation structure and flow. It also influences the branding and overall UX of the website.

Beyond the website, it will provide a foundation for all advertising materials created to promote the site.

The purpose statement is why it exists. If thoughtfully crafted, it will leave fingerprints everywhere on your site and your business, which should have a positive impact.

How to find the purpose of your website?

Finding the purpose of your website is not always easy. Often you already have an existing business but cannot clearly define why the website should exist.

The key is to think about how your website augments your business. How does it fit into the overall pie of responsibilities the business needs to meet?

It may be the case that your site has to do a few different things. It may allow your customers to complete various tasks. This is a common scenario and it often confuses the central purpose of the site.

But regardless of whether your site allows one specific action or many various actions, one reason for existing must be clearly defined.

One way to do this is to determine the common characteristic between all the features or pages of your site. Is this a common element to render a service, intake information, or generate transactions between your business and the user?

Furthermore, do your website users gain something specific by using the site? Or are they supposed to complete some specific action that benefits your company?

In thinking through this, remember, that if the site has secondary information designed to educate or inform the users, this can largely be ignored, unless it’s the primary purpose for existing.

The website’s reason for being should be stated in one clear sentence. While individual pages may have varying purposes, the primary purpose applies to the overall website.

Examples of purpose statements

To help you better understand how to find your website’s purpose, here are a few examples.

“The purpose of our website is to drive leads for our services”

“Our website markets and sells certification services in the dog walking niche”.

“Our website helps people better monitor and understand their partner account”

“People will use our website to get information about our organization”

When to use your website’s purpose

Your website’s purpose statement doesn’t have to be published on the site or in any advertising material. It’s primarily used internally.

The purpose becomes critical at the point of discussion about key business requirements. Assuming your website will have a central place in your business model, I expect it will be one of these key requirements.

The website’s purpose will be discussed, resolved, and/or communicated to other senior staff at this initial planning event. It sets the top-level objective of the website in clear terms that anyone can understand.

The next important point where you will need to communicate the purpose of the website is when commissioning its design and development. This might be done when hiring staff or contractors to build the site. These people need to know the purpose – again in clear terms.

Conclusion

A website’s purpose guides the overall design and development of the site. It also guides the initial advertising and sales materials prepared to promote the site.

It’s sometimes difficult to define the purpose of a website. This is a problem when the site has many features. Finding the common element is one approach that can help tease out the primary purpose.

Use the purpose statement during stakeholder meetings, and discussions with designers, developers, content creators, and marketers. These are the touch points where the purpose of a website will be most important.