Building a Website Strategy That Works for Small Businesses, Nonprofits, and Startups

By Jim Butz, Sales and Marketing expert with over 20 years of real world experience strategizing and executing sales and marketing plans for startups, small business and nonprofit.

Imagine walking into a grocery store where the produce is scattered across random aisles, the checkout counter is hidden in a back corner, and the deli is split into three different areas. Or picture an office where the reception desk is tucked away, signage looks like an airport arrival board, and departments are so spread out that you’re constantly walking from one end of the building to the other to get simple answers. This is exactly what it feels like for your visitors when your website doesn’t have a clear website strategy.

Why Many Websites Struggle with Strategy

Most advice about website strategy follows a similar formula: define your goal, understand your visitors, map your content, and structure your site. While that’s not wrong, it doesn’t always answer the deeper questions small businesses, nonprofits, and startups actually have when they start to build out a site:

• What if I have multiple goals?

• Which goal should I start with?

• How do I balance the different needs?

Large companies can throw resources at these challenges. But for most small organizations, every decision needs to deliver real impact. That’s where a website marketing strategy and website content strategy—rooted in clear priorities—becomes essential.

Proper Website Goals Impact Website Strategy

The Three Core Considerations Before Setting Website Goals

Before deciding on your primary goal (or goals), you need to frame them within three key considerations: Branding, Operational, and Technical. Not framing you goals with this context and with an audience in mind, opens your website strategy to being all over the place and confusing the audience it is intended to hep. These considerations don’t have to have every detail nailed down, but you do need to understand the context of the considerations so you can frame each goal, which will provide a path to a sound website strategy.

1. Branding Considerations

Branding considerations are about how your website builds recognition, trust, and authority for your organization. This includes everything from the design and look-and-feel to the tone of your website content strategy.

For example, you might start with:

“I want my website to provide information to people.”

That’s a vague goal and hard to strategize around. A stronger goal using branding considerations might be:

“I want my website to inform people in my industry (market segment) about emerging issues in our field (thought leadership).”

This version is targeted, measurable, and something you can build a website marketing strategy around.

2. Operational Considerations

Operational considerations focus on how your website supports your day-to-day business or mission. This could include online ordering, customer logins, event registrations, or downloadable resources, and product and service information.

If we continue with our information goal example. If we reframe the goal with an operational consideration we might get something like this:

“I want my website to inform prospective customers (target audience) about the technical specs of our products (product information).”

This shifts the focus to helping your audience take action, which is a critical piece of a strong website strategy. In both the branding and operational considerations help the goal become more actionable.

3. Technical Considerations

These cover how your site is built, structured, and maintained. Modern tools like WordPress, Wix, and Lovable make setup easier and take care many of technical aspects of website development. However, there’s still strategy involved in structuring and maintaining your site to meet goals. This is where professional guidance can be a game-changer—especially for small businesses, nonprofits, and startups. At Anuncier, we help you align your technical approach with your branding and operational priorities to create a website that works for both you and your audience.

Website Goals Should Always Have A Focus On The Reader

When you define a goal, you want to specify exactly who it’s for—whether that’s a target market, a market segment, or a target audience. If your developing your goals and you find that you want to reach both a market segment and a target audience - break them into two different goals as it will impact the overall strategy.

Here is an example of website goals with a similar consideration, but different audiences:

“I want my website to help with my community (market segment) so they feel we understand them when they visit (branding).”

“I want my website to to help my prospects (target audience) by showcasing completed projects and they know we understand(operational).”

“I want my website to be SEO-friendly (technical) so it reaches so anyone in our market (target market) can be exposed to our expertise and know that we understand.”

These would impact the website strategy and ultimately how the website is structured.

Branding and Operational Considerations Can Work In Harmony

While branding and operational considerations are different, they are not mutually exclusive of each other. In many cases they will play off each other. We want to distinction between the consideration, because it impacts how you design and structure your site. If you’re unsure which category a goal falls into, don’t stress—as long as you have clarity on who is the end reader.

From Considerations to Action: Ranking Your Goals

Once you’ve listed your all of your goals and you have them framed by consideration and by audience you want to rank them in order of importance. It may be helpful to get input from staff, stakeholders, and even trusted clients.

As you rank, you’ll notice patterns. Maybe your goals lean heavily toward brand-building. Maybe they’re more operational. Either way, these insights will form the foundation of your website marketing strategy. You should also look to see if you are trying to connect to a wider market or a targeted audience.

What if Branding and Operational Goals Are Both Important?

If you’re stuck between priorities, start with what connects you to your target audience fastest. For most small businesses, nonprofits, and startups, that means operational goals come first—then expand into broader branding initiatives. Getting the operational piece should be the priority if that is part of the strategy for the website.

Two more considerations when developing a website strategy

In addition to the ranked goals you have created you want to consider the technical, specifically the structure of the site. There are different approaches to building out the site. The other consideration when building out the website strategy is the type of content - think more videos, blogs, forms than the actual content itself. Below some examples that include all the elements we mentioned Branding focused strategy example:

"We want to restructure the website (technical) to include videos (content) so that we can provide recorded thought leadership pieces (branding focus) for our market (target market)"

Operational focused strategy example:

"We want to optimize our website (technical) to include a way to compare pricing plans (content) so our potential customers (target audience) can be educated on our options (operational focus) before they purchase

The Ongoing Nature of Website Strategy

Your website strategy is never “one and done.” Review and make sure you are measuring the results, at least quarterly. As your organization evolves, so will the strategic priorities of your website.

By framing goals within branding, operational, and technical considerations—and tying them directly to your audiences—you’ll have a website content strategy that not only looks great, but works hard for your organization.

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Yes, some of this was written with the help of AI, but our content starts and ends with humans. Please visit our AI policy.