When I first meet with a client, one of the things we do is attempt to determine the purpose of their website. On a website planning worksheet we use, there is a list of purposes many websites have in common. The client goes through the list and ranks the items in order of importance. So the most important item will be 1, and there will only be one item labelled with a 1.

Here are the items in that list:

• To gain a favorable impression of the company or organization.
• To develop a qualified list of prospects
• To sell products directly taking credit card information over the Internet
• To encourage potential customers to contact us by phone or mail to consummate a sale
• To make available product information and price lists to distributors
• To make available product information and price lists to customers
• To strengthen brand identification

Another good idea is to come up with a succinct mission statement for your site. You might even come up with one for your eyes only, then one that can be used as a tagline of sorts on your site.

One of our clients, The Christian Chronicle, has a good example. Their tagline on their site is "An international news source for members of churches of Christ." They've identified not only what the site is all about, but even the target audience for the site. An internal mission statement for the Chronicle might be "Provide impartial reporting of news relevant to members of the churches of Christ."

Whatever the case, a website should never be created just to create a website. It should some purpose, whether that purpose is just for fun or to make money. Establish that mission for your site and then work to fulfill it.