From Information to Intention: How the Purpose of a Website Changed

When I first became fascinated with the World Wide Web, I wasn't thinking about marketing.

I was a stay-at-home mom in the late 1980s and early 1990s watching CNN and FOX, hearing people talk about this strange new technology that could connect computers and information around the world.

I was fascinated by it, but I couldn't begin to imagine what it would eventually become.

Fast forward to 2001.

I was sitting at my computer listening to CNN.

On my computer.

That absolutely fascinated me. How were they doing that?

So I started investigating. I found the company behind the streaming technology, went to its website and started looking at what I would need to know to work for a company doing something like that.

That curiosity eventually led me to enroll at DeVry University and begin studying technology.

But here's the important part of this story: I wasn't studying marketing.

I wanted to understand how the technology worked.

When Information Was Enough

It's easy to look at an early business website today and wonder what anyone was thinking.

A logo. Some text. An address. A phone number. Maybe a few photographs.

But we're looking at those websites through modern eyes.

At the time, simply making business information available online was revolutionary.

The question businesses were asking was essentially:

What information should we put online?

And that was an entirely appropriate question.

People still discovered restaurants, entertainment, hotels, attractions and businesses through newspapers, television, radio, travel guides, directories, advertising and recommendations from other people.

The website often wasn't responsible for creating the interest.

Its job was to provide information once the interest existed.

In fact, that's exactly what happened to me.

CNN created the experience that fascinated me. My curiosity sent me looking for the technology behind it. I found the company. Then I found its website.

The website answered my next questions.

The early website was often a destination for information rather than an engine of discovery.

Then the Job of the Website Changed

As the technology evolved, so did consumer behavior.

Search became better. Connections became faster. E-commerce grew. Social media arrived. Smartphones put the internet in our pockets.

Eventually, we weren't only looking for businesses we already knew.

We started asking the internet to help us decide.

Where should we eat tonight?

What flights are available?

What should we do this weekend?

Where should we stay?

What's happening nearby?

That changed the strategic question behind a website.

Instead of only asking:

What information should we put online?

Businesses increasingly needed to ask:

What do we want this website to accomplish?

That's a very different question.

Give the Website a Job

A website can sell products. Generate leads. Encourage reservations. Build awareness. Sell tickets. Generate phone calls. Attract visitors. Recruit volunteers. Grow memberships.

For a museum, those objectives might include encouraging someone to plan a visit, attend an event, become a member, donate or discover something they didn't know existed.

And there may be several objectives.

But if we don't know what success looks like, it's difficult to design a website that creates it.

I learned a version of this lesson through Spotlight Around Town.

I started sharing information about local businesses on Facebook. People found the page. They followed it. They engaged with what I shared.

What I couldn't figure out was how I was supposed to turn that attention into a business.

I understood technology. I understood information and increasingly understood the data.

What I hadn't yet learned was how to connect attention to a business objective.

That's strategic alignment.

Who Are We Trying to Reach?

Once we know what we want people to do, another question becomes important:

Who are we trying to help do it?

This is where audience mapping becomes more interesting than simply creating a fictional customer with an age, income and favorite coffee order.

Intent matters.

Someone searching for “museum hours” is telling us something very different from someone searching for “things to do in Oregon wine country.”

The first person may already intend to visit.

The second hasn't necessarily chosen a destination at all.

One primarily needs information.

The other may need inspiration.

Understanding that distinction affects the words we use, the photographs we choose, the pages we build and the experiences we emphasize.

The Numbers Need a Purpose, Too

Then we get to analytics.

This is where my technology brain feels comfortably at home.

We can measure traffic, engagement, search behavior, conversions and countless other signals today.

But numbers without objectives can become digital wallpaper.

Ten thousand website visits sound wonderful.

But what happened next?

Did anyone make a reservation?

Buy a ticket?

Request directions?

Call?

Join an email list?

Attend an event?

Become a customer?

Even measurements such as bounce rate need context.

If someone searches for a museum's hours, lands on the website, immediately finds “Wednesday–Saturday, 10–4” and leaves, the visit may be short.

But the website did exactly what that visitor needed it to do.

That's why the better analytics question isn't simply:

How many people visited?

It's:

What were they trying to accomplish, and did we help them accomplish it?

And that brings us to where websites are today.

We have moved from asking:

What information should we put online?

to asking:

What does this person want to accomplish, and how can our digital presence help them get there?

That evolution becomes especially important for tourism, hospitality and cultural destinations.

Because sometimes the person hasn't decided what they want yet.

And that's where things get really interesting.

Next, I want to look at how digital discovery changed the way we choose restaurants, flights, entertainment and destinations, and why that means museums may need to stop marketing themselves simply as museums and start thinking more seriously about the experience they're inviting people to have.