Hope is not a Strategy

Yesterday I attended a fabulous workshop on financial statements and using them to solve your business problems. It was given by Steve Lever from Business Resource Service. Steve is an incredibly interesting presenter. How else can you explain 8 hours solid on financial statements and financial ratios and everyone in the session was as riveted on the material at 5 pm as at 8 am? A master of his material, of pacing the presentation, using his whole body and voice and of involving the audience at every step of the way.

His presentation was a perfect metaphor for a well-crafted web page!

One of his introductory comments was “hope is not a strategy.” He was speaking in terms of managing a business. But it is true in so many aspects of our lives and is true of websites.

Building a website and hoping people will come, hoping people will convert, hoping you will see an increase in sales, is dooming your website to failure.

You need to build a site based on solid customer knowledge and sound keyword research. You must must build it to be visible by the search engines. But, most of all, you must create content your customers want.

The question for today is what is your strategy for your website development? With a business, you would be measuring all your financial ratios and making good business decisions based on the facts. The same should be true for your website. Know what you expect from your website and measure your results. make changes to improve your results. focus on your customers and give them what they want.

If you are not measuring your website, today is the day to start your own website scorecard. You can start small and build it, but if you want success you need to start now. The search ranking work you did from the previous post would be a great place to start

By the way, if you are interested in improving your company financila perfromance, you should check out Profit Mastery from Steve’s company.