Too many companies go on the Web without a set of goals. This is a recipe for disaster, not only for the company, but for the marketing manager responsible. Without a clear purpose in mind, you can be assured that when management looks at the results in three or six months, they will be disappointed because they have no numbers to which to compare activity. You might be thrilled that 100 people placed orders, or 1,000 people visited the site to build brand awareness in your niche market, but if management wonders why there weren't 1,000 sales and 10,000 visitors, then your job is history. It is essential that marketers responsible for the web site create clear, achievable goals early in the process and revise them as events warrant.
People joke that no one is selling things on the Internet.
That's not true. Many companies are. Some will even tell you. But for the large majority, the purpose for going online is not to sell products, but to improve their marketing activities by gathering prospects and converting them to customers via online and off-line activities, build brand awareness, provide customer retention techniques or a host of other marketing activities designed to save time and money. Each bit of information on the home page is an official piece of business correspondence and should be treated as an important part of the company's history.