Everyone wants to know how to build a better website for their media brands. And that’s because, in their heart of hearts, most of us know too many of our current sites suck.
There are three four elements that go into the mix that makes a website great – or rotten.
They are:
Design – Not just graphics but the architecture of the site itself
Content – The stuff that makes your site worth visiting
Technology – The invisible underpinnings of your site that make everything work together effectively and peacefully
And the organizing force that drives these elements is:
Purpose – The reason why the site exists and the problem(s) it solves for consumers
The difference between genius and flatulence is largely a function of the balance or imbalance of these factors.
In diagram form, it looks like this:
The biggest problem with most radio websites in particular is that nobody asks the most important question: What is our purpose? What are we trying to achieve? And will consumers care about it?
The question is not “what should we put on a website?” The question is “why do we even have a website?” And make sure your answer is the consumer’s answer, not the answer from the corporate boardroom.
Once you have a clear fix on your purpose, you can use that to drive decisions in technology, content, and design.
And at each step in the process, you should make sure you actually have support from people who understand technology and content and design, because they are very unlikely to be the same people. And they are very unlikely to work for free.
So don’t do what most radio stations do – set out to make a website to “support” their radio station brand. That presumes the website is nothing but a promotional extension for the over-the-air brand. A website is not an ad for the station or a digital brochure. It’s the centerpiece of your digital platform with a purpose that may be all its own.
Think big and think broad. Recognize that you have a special ability to move listeners to digital destinations of their choosing, thanks to the power of your radio megaphone.
Where can you move them that will engage them? Where can you move them that will attract them in large numbers and great frequency? What problems will your digital platform solve for them?
It’s not radio, it’s UN-radio.