The website strategy session is simply used to help us put together a course of action that will meet your business goals. The strategy session also allows us to put together a formal quote so you know exactly what it will cost to get your business making sales online.
What does the website strategy session include?
There are 6 broad steps to the online strategy session which we will expand on in the article below.
- Understanding Your Business
- Current Online Presence Overview
- Goal Setting
- Website Design & Functionality
- Marketing
- Budgeting
Understanding Your Business
We kick the website strategy session off with a series of questions designed to help us better understand your business and how you operate. These questions revolve around your contact details, your core services, a competitor analysis, identifying your target market and discussing your point of difference.
Effectively this step allows us to get a complete overview of your business and helps us understand what makes your business stand out from the crowd.
Current Online Presence Overview
The second step to the website strategy session is getting an overview of your current online activities. First we identify whether you have an existing website, we look into any types of marketing you have run at any point, and we work out what you don’t like about your current online activities.
At this point we generally identify what isn’t working for you and explain why you aren’t making the level of sales you desire. It could be as simple as not having an existing website or it could be down to your website and marketing not being setup correctly. We’ll explain the specifics and help you learn what needs to be improved.
Goal Setting
This is where we find out where you want to be and why you want a website and / or marketing in the first place. 9/10 times clients come to us with the goal of attracting more sales, however many business owners have secondary goals such as improving stance in their industry, looking more professional, or attracting talent in the form of new staff.
It is important to know your goals as we need to know where you want to be so we can work out how to get you there.
Website Design & Functionality
Think of your website as a tool. The website is built with a job in mind and needs to achieve desired results for your business. Typically the primary job of your website is to turn website views into enquiries or sales.
With this in mind this part of the website brief is where we dive in and work out what your website needs to include to perform as expected. We will work out the exact pages needed, we take notes on what you do and don’t like design wise, and we work out the exact functionality required to get the job done.
Popular types of functionality include:
- Contact Forms
- Membership Systems
- Subscription Platforms
- Ecommerce Platforms
- Categorised Blogs
- Social Media Integration
- Google Maps Integration
- Website Live Chat
Marketing
Your marketing plays a very important role in driving customers to your website. In a nut shell your marketing efforts need to target the right type of person at the right time and then feed them through to your website. Once fed through to your website your website then needs to land the sale.
During this phase of the website strategy session we look at the various forms of online marketing and decide which avenue is best for your business given your goals and current business situation.
Online Marketing Options:
- SEO
- Social Media Marketing
- Google Ads
Budgeting
The last step in the website strategy session is to identify your budget. Try to avoid coming into the strategy session without a budget in mind as websites and marketing are highly variable and are typically catered to your budget. Try to have at least a brief estimation of what you’re willing to spend on the website and what you are willing to spend on marketing ongoing.
Once we know what your budget is, we can better cater to your needs by working out solutions that fit in with your current cash flow situation.
