Online Identity
A way to represent your best version online
What do I mean with online Identity?
The identity you create when representing online. At least the part you can handle by yourself. Like your website or social media profile.
What are your values?
First things first. Ask yourself these questions. Especially what are your most important values?
Maybe you’re thinking: „Nobody cares on the internet“ … well that’s not correct. Your customers, your clients, your visitors or however you want to call them. They want to „connect“ to you. And if they find their values are the same or at least mostly the same, it’s easier for them and guess what: easier for you.
What are your goals?
That’s not only one of the most important questions in life, but also, when creating a website, blog, social media profile or any other way to represent your identity.
So ask yourself: „What do I want to accomplish with this site?“. When you found the answer, you can ask the other questions. Else you may end up with a beautiful website with no value.
Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.
So before you start planning the website, create fancy prototypes or make some sketches, write down your goals. And get clear with them.
What and how should you represent?
Well, that’s a good question. What do you want to represent?
What are your or your companies values? How is your company’s culture and how do you represent elsewhere?
All these questions play a magnificent role in planning, designing and creating a website. So, for example, if you value friendship an open minded and uplifting culture, so you want to bring this to the outside. This should be found in the images you show, in the words you write and in the colors you use.
Who is the user?
You need to know who your visitor is.
Not by who is currently visiting you, but more like who do you want to visit you
After you found out who wants to visit your online identity, ask yourself what do they want to see.
What else is important?
There are some aspects which you should never forget when creating a webpage.These are essentials with your online identity.
1. The website needs to be
So what does it mean? It needs to represent your values. And with that I don’t mean the values you think your customers or visitors like. Or the values you think you should represent. But the values you LIVE.
2. Your visitors are
That’s a point I think, which gets often forgotten. Your visitors are humans. They all have emotions, problems and a reason to visit your website. Maybe there are some Google Bots among them but you can ignore them for now.
So most likely your visitor is some human being with a problem searching for a solution. So make them find the problem easily or at least let them have some fun while searching for it.
3. Add for your visitors
The greatest mess is a website which you don’t know what you are doing on it. So if you don’t add any value for your visitor, they won’t be around for long. Or even worse they stay longer but can’t find anything helpful, so they are disappointed and never come back.
Have some Questions?
Maybe you have a question about this Topic in general or some specific question. Maybe even need some tips or guidance.
Feel free to ask. I try to respond as soon as possible.