I gave a talk a few months ago to a group of small business owners. I told them that their website content should lead everything else they do in their marketing communications.

I said don’t write your ad first, write your homepage blurb.

Don’t write your brochure, write your About Us page.

Don’t send out your newsletter, start a blog.

Why? Because you can change it. Anytime.

Homepage blurb isn’t getting people to go to your Contact page? Change it.

About Us page is skimmed, but nobody reads the whole thing? Change it.

Blog is getting tons of links and lots of traffic? Now you’ve got a newsletter.

Write what you can change. Iterate, improve, and then set things in stone. Web first, then everything else.

It seems positively crazy to me to lead with an ad, and then write your website around that. Why would you lock in a direction to something that can’t be changed, and then pass along that paralysis to something that you should be able to change? That’s backward.

With Google Analytics and services like CrazyEgg you can tell what’s working, what isn’t, and act accordingly.

Always lead with what you can change.