How do you ensure that your website's architecture, content, navigation and overall experience are both delivering on your brand promise and aligning with your business goals? In my column, "Your Website Is Your Brand," I introduced the concept of a brand-based web strategy. In this column, I'll list the six steps needed to create your own web strategy.

Step 1: Articulate your unique value.
Make sure you understand the content of your brand promise before starting a website project. At the very least, identify what you do better, how you're different and whom you're targeting.

Step 2: Review what you've got.
If you have an existing website, take a look at your current site analytics (Google Analytics is a great, free resource tracking tool). This will help you get a feel for who's using your site, what they're after and how they're finding their way to you. This can also serve as a baseline for helping you develop your website strategy, including your user personas (see Step 3), key objectives and measurement strategy.

Step 3: Get to know your audience.
Create a series of user profiles to help you better understand the needs, motivations and online behaviors of your target audiences. It's helpful to create actual personas that include a name and picture, their occupation, as well as a brief personal history to help you get into the users' mind-set and understand what information they'll be looking for, how they'll navigate through your site and how you can deliver the optimal experience. Start with the point of pain they are easing by visiting your site, and build from there.

Step 4: Assess the competition.
Develop a visual diagram to help you assess your top competitors. As you navigate through their sites, try to experience it as if you were each of your persona profiles and ask yourself:

• What's their brand promise?
   
• Are they delivering on brand experience?
   
• How are they positioning themselves in the market?
   
• Whom do you think their target audiences are?
   
• What's the hierarchy of the content?
   
• Can you easily navigate through the site to find what you're looking for?
   
• What features do you appreciate?

Step 5: Create a web strategy.
The key to success: Align your website's infrastructure and objectives with your business goals through the development of a web strategy. Use your current analytics, your user personas and your competitive analysis to help devise a strategy. Ask yourself, what types of content will help you deliver on your brand promise and meet the needs of your users? Then create a list of the content you plan to include on your website. For example:

• Solutions offered
  
• Profiles/case studies
• Proprietary resources
• Blogs
• News and events
• Client testimonials
• Video, audio, flash tutorials or demos
• User-published content
• Feeds, links, newsletters
• Custom applications

Decide how you'll organize your site: Where will content live? How will various items relate to one another? How will users navigate through the site? As you lay out this visual, ask yourself: What will people see when they land on the home page and how will they interact with the site from here on? Where will content live? Is the site delivering the experience users are expecting based on what we know about them?

I recommend creating a sketch of your home page to display how the real estate will be designated for each type of content, how the navigational style will influence the user's journey through the site and to demonstrate how you've translated your brand promise to the online experience. From there, create a site map (a visual layout of the site's architecture) to show how users will navigate through the site to find content.

Step 6: Create a measurement strategy.
Keep in mind that objectives need to be specific, measurable and attainable, and should always map back to your yearly business goals. If, for instance, one of your business goals is to increase new business leads, your web strategy needs to include the tactical measures to make that happen. That means:

• Make the contact form easy to fill out
• Provide an incentive for filling out the form 
• Provide clear next steps for contact.

Limit yourself to five or six objectives; too many objectives become too hard to measure and attain.

Remember, a good website isn't determined by a flashy design; it's about communicating your distinct value by:

• Understanding your differentiated value
   
• Understanding who your users are
   
• Delivering valuable, organized content in a space that's easy to navigate
   
• Creating a site that fortifies your relationship with prospects and customers alike by driving deeper engagement.