“So, Mr. Customer, what is your goal for the redesign of your website?”

“I want our website to be the leading website in our industry!”

I always cringe when I get that response, because most of the time they don’t mean it. They really mean: It would be really cool if my website was attractive, easy to use, and loved by my customers, but I really just want to keep up with my competitors and do it inexpensively.

Most of the time, this is probably OK. There are many organizations that don’t need to be strategic with their website. But how do you know if you should be strategic with your online initiatives? Here is a simple way to think about it:

• Identify your definition of success for your web or online initiative
• Ask yourself what would happen to your business if you did not achieve your measures of success.

If the answer is: no big deal at least I will have a fresh, new website that better represents my business, you fall into the clean-up and/or keep-up categories of web development. In other words, your objective should be just a refresh of the website and/or its underlying technologies in order to keep up with your competitors and your industry. And you need to accept that achieving your goals is in large part left to chance.

If however, your answer is: I have to succeed or my business will not achieve its goals a year or two down the road, then you need to think about your web project as a stand-out initiative. You need your  website to be a principle source of competitive advantage or differentiation. It’s the only way to stand-out online.

If you fall into this category, you need to heed the advice of those ancient Chinese web designers – understand your audience better than anyone else in the industry.