Crafting a Site Mission Statement

Before you start building your website, it’s helpful to craft a mission statement or a statement of purpose. Your mission statement should address:

1. Topics and goals – What is your site about?
2. Target audience – Who is your site for?
3. Competitive differentiator – Why should visitors visit your site over other websites?

Why bother with a mission statement? Your mission statement helps keep your web design project focused. Many small business owners get caught up in the design aspects of making their site look pretty – what colors, pictures, and fonts to use – and lose focus on just what it is that they want their site to do.

Design is important, but think of design as a paint job designed to highlight your content rather than the meat and potatoes of the website, itself. When you build a home, you worry about the big picture stuff first – like how many floors, bedrooms, and bathrooms. You decide the color of your bathroom tile much later in the process. So it is with web design.

Having a mission statement also helps to keep everyone involved in the process on the same page. If you’re not the sole decision maker in your company, you know that reaching a consensus on the details can be challenging. It’s especially difficult when everyone has a different picture of what the site should look like because everyone has their own personal preferences. I’ve had clients spend six weeks trying to agree upon the exact shade of blue that should be incorporated into the site. That’s missing the forest through the trees and is a lot of time wasted. Your visitors aren’t going to care, so long as the site looks professional.

With a mission statement, you clearly spell out your goals and can evaluate the design and performance of the site based on whether or not the site meets those goals. You’ll know if you’re generating newsletter subscriptions or persuading visitors to read your content. You’ll be able to see your number of subscribers rise or money flowing into your bank account.

What you must realize is that when you create your website, it can’t be about you. It must be about your target audience. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like the website. What matters is whether your target audience is taking the action you’d like them to.

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