What questions does it answer?
What problems does it solve?
Putting your writing and photos online is not enough.
There's already too much information and entertainment available in print and online.
Your website must actively help people in a way they will recognize as valuable, or it will never be differentiated from the babble of info already available.
How will your website be different from, and better than, all the websites already online?
(If you haven't found any sites that do what you want to do, or have found some but they do it badly, you're on the right track. Write down why your site will be better, and how.)
The better you define your website's purpose at the beginning, the easier it will be to build a successful site.
You should be able to define your site's purpose in a sentence or two.
You should do it right now,
do it well, and save
it, because you're
going to use your one-sentence definition frequently
as you publicize
your site using links and search
engines.
Reality Check!
If your statement of purpose
is vague or general—"to
provide info for travelers to Mexico"—then
it's not good enough. How many websites already
exist with that purpose?
You must differentiate your site, carve out a niche for it, make it unique, or it—and you—will never rise above the throng.
