By the time you first meet with a web design company, you need to know what you want your site to be able to do, which is very closely linked to who your target market is. You first need to decide who you are trying to speak to before you can decide on how to say it.

Know Your Target Market

To start off, here are a few basic but vital questions you need to ask yourself to establish your marketing strategy:

- Am I targeting corporate companies, small business or the average consumer?
- Am I trying to appeal to a particular or multiple genders?
- What age group will be interested in my site and what my business has to offer?
- What other companies are trying to appeal to the same target market as mine and what do their websites look like?

If you are starting your business, this market research will not only contribute to the success of your website, but to that of your business too.

On the other hand, if you already have a business, you will already have a pretty good understanding of your target market as well as your competition, and you can use this knowledge to your advantage when planning your website needs.

What Does Your Website Need To Do?

Having figured out who your target market is and what your competitors are doing online, you can start making a list of features that your website might need.

For instance:

- Does it need a gallery?
- Does it need a discussion forum?
- Does it need a shop?
- Do you want to be able to update the content myself?
- Do you need to constantly change the information on the site, as in the case of property sales, latest events or news?
- Do you need to provide maps to locations, or contact numbers to help-lines?
- Does your site need to provide links to other sites?
- What do your competitor's websites look like?
- What features do their websites have?
- Is there anything you can do to your website to give you the edge over your competitors?

The more detailed you can be about your website needs and your target market, the more chance you have of effectively marketing and communicating your requirements to your web designers. It also means that you start to understand the affect your website can potentially have on your business, which is great insight to gain for the future.

Click 'Next' to move onto the next lesson - What Is Your Budget?