In other words, ‘who are you, and what do you want?’
Whether you are a new business owner looking to create your first website, or a project leader in a large organisation managing a redevelopment, you must have a deep understanding of your purpose as a business, your business personality and your long term goals.
Purpose
Quite simply the answer to the question, why are you in business? If you’ve ever had to write a mission statement for a business plan you should have formulated a concise answer to this question. If you haven’t now is the time to do it. Forget about cliches and dig for the personal, to be rich, or the best in the world are generalisations that are simply to vague to give you any kind of guiding focus.
Values
What kind of company, or organisation are you, what is your business personality? Are you corporate and trustworthy, or are you open and inclusive, do you value innovation, or user engagement, is loyalty your guiding principle?
When we were first putting together Post Creative we sat round the kitchen table with a few postit pads and began by thinking about some companies we loved. On a postit we wrote down attributes we admired about those companies, what made us love them. Then we began to think about the kind of attributes we would like to be remembered for as a company. We wrote down as many as we could and then we decided to narrow it down to 5, 5 values that we would embedded in every product, practice and service we supplied. Give it a go and see what you come up with.
Vision
Vision can be the most difficult to think about because it seems so distant as to be intangible. What will you business be like in 5 years or 10? How big will it be, where will it be located, will the products or services have changes, how will your life have changed as a result. It is just guess work I know, but unless you have a sense of where you would like to go, it is very difficult to take the meaningful steps that will take you there.
Why are these 3 things so important to your web project?
- The purpose of your website is to achieve your business objectives.
- Knowing your values is to find your voice, your style, your brand. Your values will guide you in all aspects of your business especially in communicating with your clients and customers.
- Your vision will provide the route map for how you website will develop over the coming years, always in line with your purpose and values and always heading towards your vision.
