Ideally, the business plan and online strategy will dovetail, so that it’s clear how the online goals support the business goals. Once the business goals are clear, the online strategy will follow logically from them.

The Online Strategy has six elements:

• Objectives
• Audiences
• Competition
• Traffic Sources
• Strategies
• Metrics

Let’s look briefly at each:

Objectives: What do we want the site to do? Clearly, the online presence needs to increase profits or profile or both. It must make the company and its products or services appealing and understandable to its customers. It must communicate key messages and convey a brand identity.

Target Audiences: Typically, a company has primary audiences (potential customers) and secondary audiences (existing customers). Of course, there are others, but for simplicity, let’s focus on the customer. Each customer has a need to be fulfilled when they visit a website or Web 2.0 medium, so if these can answer their questions quickly and easily, there’s a better chance that they will convert to a paying customer or satisfied stakeholder. Remember not to lump your customers into a generic category. Each has different needs which need to be addressed.

Competition: An Online Strategy must include a detailed assessment of the competition, especially how rivals go about communicating the uses and value of their product or service, and how this gives them an edge in the market.

Traffic Sources: Tools like Google Analytics generate detailed information about site visitors, including visits from organic search, direct navigation, search engine referral and, if applicable, pay-per-click referral or e-mail campaigning.

Strategies: Put simply, these are the ways and means of achieving the high-level objectives you set for your online channels. For example, the objective to increase sales by say 50% would be followed through with a persistent call to action on every page of the site, contact form, email signup, or ‘follow us on Twitter’ / ‘visit us on Facebook’ buttons.

Metrics: These are the yardsticks by which the success of the online presence is measured. Metrics on a traditional website could include value of product sales, number of times a demo is viewed, number of times a brochure is downloaded, number of unique visitors to the site and to specific pages, the keywords referring and unique visitors per keyword.

The Web offers fantastic opportunities for a business to boost its profile and profits. However, you do need to think critically about what your customer needs, how well you are meeting this need, and how your website and Web 2.0 media will support you to respond.

Preparing an online strategy is an essential first step. It needn’t cost you a fortune and shouldn’t be overly time-consuming. But once you have the roadmap, you have every chance of deploying a first-class website and the right Web 2.0 media to ensure you connect with your customer and turn them into profitable sales.