Questions You Must Answer Before Your Website Goes Live

Either you have a website and you've got questions as to how effective it is, or you are thinking about getting a website to help you grow your business. Regardless of where you're at in the online marketing world, you need solid answers to these five questions before you will be able to craft an effective online presence.

- Does your website have a goal? Many websites are designed to generate sales while others are educational websites. Still other websites' entire purpose is to gather leads. Take the time to think of the goal of your website. The design of your website depends on your goals. If you're not clear on those goals, your website won't be effective.

- Who will benefit from your website? Your language, content, and pictures will all need to be targeted towards your audience. A website for attorneys will be different from a website for people hoping to sign up for a class action lawsuit.

- What is your traffic funnel for your site? Once someone finds your homepage, where do you want them to go next? This question is related to a different question, in that your website's goal will determine the preferred traffic pattern for your site. Whatever your goal, make your website navigation simple and clear. Fancy animated links are occasionally confusing, and the search engines hate them.

- Have you encouraged your website visitors to take action? Nearly all websites, in order to be profitable, will need the website visitor to take action. Your site's call to action should be simple, clear, and easy to accomplish. Words like "Click here to purchase" or "Sign up for our newsletter" should be clearly visible and the task easily accomplished.

- What will you use to determine the success of your website? Are you looking for sign-ups to your newsletter? Are you basing success on sales figures? Perhaps you want people to visit a brick and mortar store. Whatever it is, you will need to be able to measure whether or not your website is working for your business. That way you can make educated changes to your website based on real figures and statistics rather than just assumptions.

Even if you are hiring a professional website designer to make your website for you, you will still need clear answers to each of these questions in order to have the most effective website possible. The more clear you are in your pre-website planning, the more likely it is your website will help you be successful.Before you make a website from scratch, make sure you check out LMDesigning's beautiful and affordable website designs. Lisa Munoz has created some of the most productive and engaging websites with her affordable website designs.