I spent time with a wonderful charity in Europe who told
me they were 'redoing their website'. I hear that a lot these days, and
for good reason; many are pretty bad.
But they also told me that they had close to a thousand
different pages.
It turns out that Google Analytics informed them 99% of
all visitors went to just one of the most popular dozen pages.
What was most visited page?
Home page was first.
Then jobs.
Those two
accounted for 80% of traffic! Have a look at yours and I bet it is
similar.
Imagine how much work went into the 900+ pages that no
one visited.
All that work and effort, meetings, politics,
copywriting, images, updating, coding, testing, link fixing. For no
reason...
If you are developing a new website, it is almost
certainly cross organisational. Lots of people involved. Fundraisers, communications people, service providers
and board members (!) may want a piece of your digital real estate.
So here is what I think they should be asked.
Tell me:
• What you want on the
web
• Why would someone want
to view your page?
• What are people asked
to do when they get there?
• What is your measure
of success?
• How will you drive
people there?
• How long do you want
it to stay there and how will you expire it?
Without a good answer to all those questions... Nope.
Sorry. No real estate for you.
Simple, but effective.
