Your website is outdated, slow, and glitchy. You’re ready to bring your company up to speed by creating a beautiful, functional site that will engage your customers. So all you have to do is find a digital agency and get that redesign started, right?

Not so fast. If you approach your B2B website design without a clear plan and goals in mind, your new website might look shiny, but it won’t help you connect with customers or keep up with your competition. Here are 4 questions to ask yourself to help you determine what you really want out of a new website:

How can your website support your marketing strategy? A website without a strategy behind it is just taking up space on the Internet. The purpose of a company website is to serve your marketing goals, draw in potential customers, and communicate your marketing message. Setting those goals and identifying your message are the first things to do before you start a website redesign. Your content, design, keyword strategy and site functionality should be based on your marketing strategy and should all work to serve that strategy.

What’s important to your customers? Customers expect a quality user experience when they go to a website. If you can’t deliver, they’ll go somewhere else. Understanding your customer demographic and their needs forms the backbone of your marketing strategy, which in turn informs your website design and functionality. Customers look to your website to discover solutions, learn key information about your product offerings and determine if your company has what they need to address their challenges. Make sure your site is easy to navigate, has “sticky,” compelling content that doesn’t sound too promotional, and meets your customers’ expectations about what information they will find. And keep your content dynamic, so customers—and search engines—will keep coming back.

What makes your company stand out from the crowd? Every company needs to understand its unique point of difference in order to successfully market itself. What is it that you do better than the others in your industry? Figuring this out will give your B2B website design a direction. Your point of difference should be front and center in your website copy and design. You need to convince visitors why they should choose you and not another company. Great websites leave a significant impression in the visitor’s mind and help establish a company’s strengths.

What’s your keyword strategy? Websites need good SEO to succeed, and it’s essential to incorporate SEO from the beginning than to try and shoehorn it into an already-made website. Select a focus keyword for each page, and incorporate it into the copy, visuals, and metadata. (Look to Google AdWords and other online SEO tools for keyword inspiration and research.) Make sure that everyone who’s working on the website understands the importance of including the keywords. Create content around the keyword, rather than the other way around. Your SEO will be stronger if it forms the backbone of the website—and your copy will have a clearer focus.

Don’t rush into a new B2B website design without taking the time to reflect on what you want the site to do for you. Answering these four questions will help you establish a strong website strategy and ensure you’re moving in the right direction.