I am reading Make Your Idea Matter: Stand Out with a Better Story (2012) by Bernadette Jiwa. Excellent book. In it, Jiwa asks the following essential question:

What should your website do?

Jiwa notes you want your website to:

1. Be on the first page in Google.

2. Attract customers.

3. Boost credibility.

4. Convert browsers into subscribers.

5. Change followers into fans.

6. Connect you to the right audience.

7. Make you money.

8. Increase your business, bottom line or popularity.

9. Make you look bigger, better, stronger, faster.

10. Tell a story that people want to believe.

And, as Jiwa notes, your customers want your website to:

1. Be exactly what they were looking for.

2. Give them a solution to a problem.

3. Tell them the answer.

4. Help them to understand.

5. Entertain or educate.

6. Connect them to people, ideas and things they care about.

7. Save them time.

8. Save them money.

9. Be clear and show them the way.

10. Focus on their wants and needs.

One might think of the what you want as the GET list.

And what your customers want as the GIVE list.

Over the course of the last year, I have been revising my team's real estate website - CambridgeRealEstate.com - in the spirit of GIVING. Aiming to create a website that is exactly what the visitor is looking for. A website that helps solve the problem of buying the right home or selling for the best price. A website that answers questions. One that fosters understanding. That educates. That entertains. That is clear.

For sure, one's website is a never-ending working in progress. Just yesterday, I spent a couple of hours working on CambridgeRealEstate.com to make it even better. It's a labor of love when the energy that informs your website is about delivering something of value. Aiming to give rather than to get leads to the greatest of riches.