Other pages in this series: 1. Overview | 3. Production | 4. Launching | Business models
A few years ago, there was a lot of talk about "pure-play" web sites: businesses that were based solely on the web. When the hype receded, it became clear that there were few such businesses. Most businesses (and by "businesses" I mean any type of organization - not only private sector) operate both online and offline. Assuming you already have an offline business, it's useful to consider how a website could reinforce that business - and also how the existing business can provide uses for the website. For example, if you run a small consultancy, a website can be the equivalent of a brochure. Print the web address on your business card, and people interested in your work can consult your website to find out more about what you do. But over a few years, as your website becomes linked from other sites, you're likely to get some initial contacts through your website: people will find the website first, and the rest of your business later. The secret here is to come up with website ideas that will work in both directions. Think about it like this: what could a website enable you to do, that you aren't doing now?
Other websites will be competing with yours for the attention of visitors. Which site should they visit - yours or another? You'll want them to visit your site, but there has to be a reason for that. Think of the main keywords and phrases that visitors might use in a search engine (such as Google to find your site. Better still, ask some other people to think of keywords too. Type those keywords into a search engine, and see what comes up. Like it or not, those are the sites yours will be competing with. Take a thorough look at those sites, and see what you can learn from them. That doesn't mean copying their ideas (which would be obvious to those visitors), but trying to find out what they're offering people who searched on that keyword that your site is not offering. Can you satisfy those information needs in a better way?
Depending on the scope of your business, you might want to restrict that search to your own geographical area. It's useful to distinguish between website competitors and business competitors: there will probably be a lot more of the former than the latter.
A thorough way to do this is to draw up a table, with a competitor's website in each column, and a type of page on each row. Put a tick mark in the table when that competitor has that type of page. Create the table column by column, then read it row by row. That will make it clear which types of page are "industry standard' and should therefore be included on your own site. Trying to be too different just confuses visitors. By all means, add something different, but the core pages should be standard - unless all the competitors are making life unnecessarily difficult for visitors.
Most sites start small, and steadily grow. The initial questions are how small should the site start, and how large should it grow? Here are some pros and cons of a range of sizes: one page, gigantic, small, medium, and large...
One page. The smallest websites we've seen are a single page. If all you want to do is declare "I exist" and provide some contact details, one page may be enough. This can apply if you're running a business of a type that doesn't need explaining (such as a doctor's surgery) and the only reason for having a website is to give your customers another way of finding you again. This type of website works like a permanent advertisement - except that customers will find it only if they search for it. The most important factor for a 1-page site is simply that it should be found. Because common business types exist everywhere, your customers will be from your local area, so you should make sure to be included on any local website index or search engine. Also, of course, the contact details should be kept up to date (but it's amazing how many sites have out of date addresses, phone numbers, etc.)
Gigantic. At the other extreme, we've worked with a few websites of around 100,000 pages - obviously for very large organizations. The main problem with sites this big is that visitors have great trouble finding the information they want. So they need top quality "information architecture" - user-tested navigation systems, comprehensive site maps, site-based search engines (that are effective and easy to use - many aren't), and plenty of cross-links between related parts of the site. If you don't already have a website, you may not reach this stage for a long time - but if you think your site will eventually be very large, it's easier if you plan for this from the beginning, with a deep subdirectory structure. This helps to avoid constantly changing the page addresses, as the site grows.
Small sites. Between the 1-page and the 100,000-page sites are most others. Many sites for small businesses have about 10 pages: typically a home page, an "about us" page, perhaps a contact details page or inquiry form, plus one page for each group of products or services that the organization provides. These sites - usually not updated very often - are designed mainly for potential customers who've heard of the business, and want to know more before dealing with it. So the main purpose of this type of site is to instil confidence: you need to show that your business will be a trustworthy one to deal with.
Medium sites. Going up another order of magnitude, there are sites with around 100 pages. At around this size, a site starts to become interesting, being less predictable than the 10-page small business site. It's large enough to give visitors some incentive to come back and take another look. However, it also becomes more difficult for visitors to find specific pages, and you may need a site map and an internal search engine. The Audience Dialogue site is around this size, with 200-odd pages; without the site map and site search it would be very hard to find any specific information.
Large sites. Another step up again is the site with 1000-odd pages. At this level, it becomes quite difficult for visitors to find the right page. A site of this size is beyond the capability of a single person to maintain - unless most pages are very small and in the same format (e.g.a catalog of products). Therefore, sites of this size (and upwards) usually generate pages from a database, using a content management system to coordinate the work of the various contributors of the site. There's usually one editor or webmaster, and a number of part-time contributors. Out-of-date material is usually a serious problem with sites of this size, because nobody sees it as their job to remove such material, unless each section of the site is the responsibility of a specific person.
Whatever size range you choose for your site, it will probably get larger. If you don't allow for growth, and the website does grow substantially, at some stage you'll have to do an expensive redesign - and most of the bookmarks that users have made will probably stop working. So to be on the safe side, think a little bigger.