You are if you’re not following a plan or strategy to develop your website so it speaks to your target. In fact, you’re wandering around unfocused, too. A website is a marketing tool although most owners treat it as though it will magically rise up and engage visitors all by itself. So here is a brief outline regarding how you might go about the process of creating a well-positioned, marketing savvy website. All in blogspeak, of course. Which means it’s an extremely simplified marketing plan for positioning to a target audience.

• Define your site- Before you can actually choose the type of software or tool you’ll need to create your site, you need to first determine what KIND of site you want. Is it a site to promote your business? Or an eCommerce site to sell stuff? Is it a community forum for like minded.

• Define your goals- What do you want this website to do for you? Sell? Get additional business? Advertise more high-profit items or services? Serve as a status gateway for your sales and marketing team? Be an informational platform that is supported by advertising.

• Define features These are the features you want on your site. If you are a real estate firm, do you want an amortization calculator? Do you want a venue for people to leave comments? Do you want a slide show, streaming video, audio files? Do you want a schedule of how-to clinics and sign up capability for these clinics? What about registration and payment capability? All of this helps determine the tools you use, the package you might buy the host you will choose.

• Marketing strategy-Your marketing strategy is a plan to reach specific objectives. It doesn’t have to be catchy initially. It just has to define what you would like the site to accomplish. For instance, you want your computer repair business to cater to home office entrepreneurs who want same day repair. Your focus is getting computers fixed fast from a remote location and keeping the business person at peak productivity by minimizing downtime. You may also want to get an affiliate cut for spyware you recommend on your website and other products that keep computers virus free and performing smoothly. You want to keep in touch with your market through a newsletter with free tips on how to boost performance and with latest virus alerts. You’d like to start offering monthly contracts for being the “IT Department” for the home office entrepreneur and eventually establish yourself as the go-to company for IT services.

Remember not to focus on yourself or your company, but think strategically in terms of how your product(s) or service can benefit your target market. Then your website should guide them along the path to the action you wish them to take much like a live sales person would do. Plan your website well and it could become one of your least expensive and highest yielding marketing and sales tools.