Focusing on the Purpose of Your Website

If you don’t know the primary goal of your website or you have a variety of goals, objectives and ideals for your website than you may be suffering from what I like to call, “MPNS” or “Multi-Purpose No Success” syndrome.

Every website needs a single purpose and each page of the site must then reflect that purpose. When you go to Google you can see that the primary purpose of that site is to “Search”. When you go to Twitter you can see that the primary purpose is to “See what people are saying about ….” Even when you go to PapaJohns.com you can see that the primary purpose of the site is to get you to order a pizza online, not to call the local Papa John’s pizza restaurant.

Whether you have one user or 1 million visitors to your site, your site needs a purpose. Ecommerce sites are meant to sell a product which means the Buy Now button, Toll-free Order Line and the Free Shipping offer should be highlighted on every page of the website.

Even sites that don’t sell a product must have a specific call to action on every page of the website. A services business needs the phone number and contact form to be emphasized on every page of its site. Even the contact us page needs a call to action.

It’s popular today to overwhelm yourself or your site with the latest social media must-have buttons or the most up-to-date video technology. But if you haven’t identified the single greatest purpose of your website, these items could simply confuse the potential customer or visitor. Even high quality pictures of your product are only good if they include a call to action.

Make Your Website Searchable
One of the main reasons for emphasizing a single purpose across each individual page of your website is the fact that a search engine looks at your website as a group of pages. Search engines don’t rank sites in search results, they rank pages in search results. You may hope that every new customer goes to your homepage first but that is not usually the case.

A great example of this is a children’s DVD site I manage whose most popular page (based on most unique visitors) is the free coloring pictures download page. Luckily, each coloring picture also has a special offer next to it which sells the products and now the non-revenue generating coloring picture pages help sell a lot of DVDs.

The point is this: It’s often the simplest things in business that have the greatest impact on your success. Take a minute and walk through your site and look at your analytics to make sure every page of your website is taking advantage of emphasizing the purpose of your business, and that it’s helping guide your site and business to success. And if you have a friend that suffers from MPNS please send them this article.

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About the Author: Chris Finken is co-founder of OrangeSoda, a leading search engine marketing company for small businesses, and is personally an active web marketer. In addition to lead generation, affiliate marketing and ecommerce sites, Chris is a big fan of hamburgers and shares his passion on his burger blog, Burger Voice.

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