As a best practice, as with any strategic item in business, you should define goals for your website. Defining goals will assist in determining if your site can meet these goals or if your site needs to be structured differently.

Goals for your website can include items such as:

• Increase Membership
• Increase Users
• Increase product sales
• Increase interest in your company
• Generate leads

The next step – how do you get there?  Proper planning and strategies are vital. Once you have established the overall goal,  determining strategies to meeting these goals is the next step.  As an example of this, if your goal is to increase membership, some of your strategies could include:

1. Ensuring your website design provides users who visit your site with an easy way to gain information on membership.  This should be clearly visible on your homepage and displayed in a way that is eye catching to the user;
2. Ensuring your website provides your current members with an easy way to access member information and update their information.  Member information changes and members need a way to easily update their information;
3. Reviewing current membership database, ensure that this is up-to-date and easily accessible to users who visit your site.  Offering your members with the ability to have their name seen/searched on your website is a great way to increasing membership and dues;
4. Review data on members who haven’t renewed in the past year or two.  Establish a cross-media campaign to reach out to these members to determine if they are interested in renewal.  Offer a discount if they renew within a certain period of time. Cross Media campaigns can include something as simple as an email with a PURL or delivery via print medium (a post card).  A PURL  (Personalized URL) for the member can allow them to access their personalized landing page and renew their membership or provide you with feedback that can be used for further discussions with that potential new member.

Once you have the strategies outlined review your website.  Will your current website design and structure allow you to meet these strategies? Will you need to alter your design in order to create a visually appealing membership area?  Does your site need to include a member search section to promote members and their abilities/specialties?

These are just a few examples, but defining your website goals and strategies will provide you with the starting point to examining your website and possible changes that are necessary to reach it’s fullest potential.