Make Your Website Work!
Many consultants claim that companies spend more on their website than on the equipment that holds it. This statement seems to be in line with something else recently heard: Organizations spend much more on their website than on business process improvement, even though the Return On Investment (ROI) is much higher.
Most people explain that a website is a very essential asset of a company and that sole fact is sufficient to spend a lot of money on it without questioning its ROI.
Website Strategy
A website can, and should, be a part of the business strategy. That implies that the website should fulfill requirements of sales, marketing, operation, customer service, and finance. Ask these questions:
- What are the Key Business Requirements (KBRs) of your website?
- Which Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) are used to measure the performance?
- Who is In-charge of your website?
- How are you going to make sure that continuous improvement is embedded in your operational processes?
Good questions, with no easy answers! Some examples of KBR's for a website:
- Does it inform the public about some issue?
- Does it increase the lead generation?
- Does it provide an on-line sales facility?
Reduce Complexity!
It is imperative to reduce the complexity of your website management, and get back to the basics: Clear Key Business Requirements, clear Key Performance Indicators, a responsible manager and a measureable improvement process are mandatory.
Using this approach leads to an easy implementable and maintainable website. Why? It might be because you reduced complexity by introducing a very few but very relevant KBR's, and introduced continuous improvement!
