Working on a new website?

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.