If you want to succeed in life, it is important to take stock of where you are at and how you can adapt, improve, and take advantage of the opportunities presented to you.
The SWOT analysis is a powerful tool to help assess your strengths and weaknesses, as well as your opportunities and threats. It can be used for analyzing many situations, both in your personal and business life. In this example, I will be going through some basics of conducting a SWOT for your website. It doesn’t matter if you are using the website for adsense revenue, affiliate marketing, promoting your product / service, business, or personal. This analysis will still apply.
I have included a basic MS WORD version for download, and you can use it as a template for this exercise. Of course, feel free to modify and adapt it for your situation.
Strengths:
What does your website do well?
What low cost resources can you access?
Why do visitors choose to visit your site over others?
What advantage does your site have in comparison to your competitors?
What does your site do better than any other that you have seen?
Consider these questions from both an internal perspective, as well as from an outsiders perspective (customers, visitors). Web site metrics / stats are a great way to analyze some of this info. Also, think about your strengths in relation to your competitors. For example, let’s take a look at affiliate marketing. If your competition (other affiliates going after the same industry / product suite) has great content, then having great content is not necessarily a website strength…it is a necessity if you want to compete.
Weaknesses:
What could your site improve on?
What direction should your site avoid?
Where do you have fewer resources than others?
What are others likely to see as weaknesses?
Again, think about these questions from an internal and external perspective. Ask other people their first impression of your site. You may want to go as far as asking a group such as an online forum to offer feedback on your site (I would recommend that you participate in one before you ask this question though, as some forums don’t like this question if it your first post). Don’t skip over this section, as it is better to address and recognize these weaknesses now rather than later.
Opportunities:
What web trends do you see around you, and how could you take advantage of them?
What are the obvious opportunities facing you?
What is the long term view of opportunity for your website?
How can you turn your website’s strengths into opportunities?
Useful opportunities could be…
Weak competition
Trends in your industry or online that you are positioned to take advantage of
Changes in technology – new tools etc…
One way to look at opportunities is to look at your strengths and see if they open up any opportunities for you. On the flip side, you may also want to check out your weaknesses and ask yourself that if you STOPPED doing any of these things, would it open up an untapped opportunity that you could explore.
Threats:
What obstacles do you personally or your website face?
What industry trends could harm your site?
What is your competition doing?
Is changing technology threatening your site?
Do you have financial strain or cash problems?
Are there any weaknesses that could seriously threaten your website?
Once you have the results from your website SWOT analysis, you will have a great idea of what to focus your energy and what not to. It can also put potential problems into perspective and allow you to deal with them proactively.
Feel free to comment and let me know how this tool helped your website. I look forward to hearing from you.