In the first 5 minutes of a meeting to discuss a new website, it became apparent that my client was lost in a sea of features. Because they hadn’t defined the website’s purpose, they couldn’t agree on what features they needed or how to implement them.

With all the excitement the web and social sites generate these days, it’s easy to brainstorm features. Blogs, forums, messaging, photos, video, API … the possibilities seem endless. It’s also easy to end up with a long list and no idea where to start.

When you define the purpose for your website, it becomes very easy to organize your features. You can quickly decide what’s essential, what’s secondary, and what’s a distraction. Since each feature also has many possible implementations, the purpose will also help you make decisions like “Should the forum be public or private?” and “Are member profiles are necessary?”.

In the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Web Design, I wrote about putting first things first. If you don’t explicitly define your website’s purpose, you may never get beyond a list of features.