On average, an adult is awake for 15 hours a day. Of those fifteen hours, 6.75 of them are spent online. In today’s digital climate, having a website is crucial for your business success. It’s is often the first point of contact with potential clients and customers, so it’s important to accurately reflect your brand and help achieve business goals. But, how do you determine what those website goals should be?
Here are 5 steps to setting website goals:
1) Evaluate Your Needs
Before setting any website goals, it’s essential to understand what you hope to achieve with your online presence. Consider your business objectives and how having a website can help you achieve those goals. For example, you may want to increase online sales, generate more leads, or improve brand awareness.
Here are a few ways setting website goals helps to achieve a business’s objectives:
Increased visibility and reach: A website provides a 24/7 online presence, allowing your business to reach a larger audience, including customers who may not be able to physically visit your brick-and-mortar location. With the rise of mobile usage, having a website that is optimized for all devices is crucial for making a good impression on potential customers.
Improved brand recognition: A well-designed website that reflects your brand’s identity can help establish your business as a credible and trustworthy entity. It also allows you to control the message and image you present to the world, helping you establish a consistent brand image across all marketing channels.
Lead generation: A website can serve as a valuable resource for attracting and converting leads into customers. By including calls-to-action, contact forms, and other conversion-focused elements on your website, you can encourage visitors to take action and move closer to becoming a customer.
Customer engagement and education: A well-thought out website can provide valuable information about your products or services, as well as, helping to educate and engage with future clients and customers. This increases visitors’ understanding of what you offer and their benefits which helps build trust and grow sales.
Increased sales: A streamlined website sales process makes purchasing easier for customers. By providing online shopping capabilities, you can give customers the convenience of making purchases from anywhere, at any time. Services can also be sold in this manner.
2) Create SMARTER Goals only
Once you know what you want to achieve with your website goals, it’s time to make the intention specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time defined, evaluated, and reviewed (SMARTER).
SMARTER website goals are the most important aspect of any website design and development process, as they help you to focus your efforts and resources on what really matters. Here’s what each letter in the acronym SMARTER stands for and how it can be applied to your website goals:
S – Specific: Your website goals should be specific and clearly defined. For example, instead of saying “improve website traffic,” you might say “increase website traffic by 20% within the next 6 months.”
M – Measurable: Your goals should be measurable so that you can track progress and determine whether or not you have achieved them. In the example above, the increase in website traffic can be measured by tracking the number of visitors to your site.
A – Achievable: Your goals should be achievable and realistic. While it’s important to aim high, setting unrealistic goals will only lead to frustration and disappointment.
R – Relevant: Your goals should be relevant to your website and your overall business objectives. For example, if your website is designed to grow your newsletter, your goal might be to increase the number of newsletter signups each month.
T – Time Defined: All goals require a defined time frame so that you know when to evaluate the progress and adjust or tweak your plan. In the example above, the goal is to increase website traffic by 20% within the next 6 months.
E – Evaluated: Regularly evaluate your progress towards your goals to ensure you are on track. If you’re not making progress towards your goal at the speed you expected, you may need to tweak, adjust, or abandon your strategy and start over.
R – Reviewed: Regularly review whether your goals are still relevant and in alignment with your business objectives. Most importantly, don’t forget to celebrate your successes and appreciate the progress made towards your website goals.
Follow the SMARTER framework to stay focused and make steady progress towards your website goals.
3) Brainstorm
Think about how you can use your website to achieve the goals. Brainstorming may include the type of content you create and how you want it to be seen, the use of forms and how best to design them, how to integrate automation to simplify tasks, or whether it needs to connect to other platforms such as a scheduler, event planner, shipper, or customer relationship manager (CRM).
Let your imagination run wild because brainstorming is an important step in understanding all the ways your website can help you achieve your business objectives.
There are several reasons why brainstorming is important:
Generates ideas: Brainstorming allows you to generate a large number of ideas in a short amount of time. This is especially useful when you are trying to come up with new and creative ways that your website can help you achieve your goals. Don’t worry about how realistic they are in this phase.
Encourages collaboration: Brainstorming is a collaborative process that encourages input from multiple team members. This process helps ensure you’re considering a wide range of perspectives and ideas.
Supports creativity: Brainstorming is an excellent way to tap into your team’s creativity and encourage them to think outside the box. This often leads to new and innovative ideas you may not have considered otherwise.
Increases engagement: Brainstorming helps to increase engagement and motivation among team members. By encouraging participation and sharing in the process, you’re building a sense of ownership and accountability.
Prioritizes ideas: After brainstorming, evaluate and prioritize the ideas generated. Focus on the ideas most likely to achieve your goals.
4) Determine Your CTA
A call to action (CTA) is a critical element of any website, and it has to be compelling. Your CTA should be clear and easy to understand, and it should motivate people to take action. For example, you may ask visitors to make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, download some information, or take a class.
There are several reasons why determining your CTA is important:
Clarity: A clear and concise CTA makes it easy for visitors to understand what you want them to do. Planning your CTA now, keeps you in alignment with your goals and will help you design your website with prime conditions for visitor follow through.
Conversion optimization: A well-designed CTA can help to increase conversions by guiding visitors towards a specific action. For example, if your goal is to get more people to sign up for your newsletter, a clear CTA that says “Sign up for our newsletter” can help to achieve this but it would be better to leave space for a description or benefit statement as well.
Increased engagement: A strong CTA can help to increase engagement with your website by providing a clear next step for visitors to take. This can help to keep visitors engaged and moving through the conversion funnel. Getting people to interact is more challenging than it’s ever been, so set the website up for success.
Better data collection: By using a specific CTA, you can collect data on which actions are most effective in driving conversions. This data can then be used to improve your website and marketing strategies in the future.
If you’re unsure which CTA makes sense for your industry, a web agency can help you with what is working, or not, in today’s online climate.
5) Find Your Partners
Finally, you need to determine who has the skills to carry out your vision for the website. This may involve hiring a web designer, a content writer, or a marketing expert. Choose partners who understand your goals and have the experience to help you achieve them.
There are several considerations when determining who has the skills to bring your vision to life:
Identify your needs: Before you start looking for partners, it is important to determine what skills and expertise you need to achieve your goals for the website. This could include help with creating the goals, web design, development, content creation, and more. Sometimes it will be multiple companies or it could be a singular company.
Assess your internal resources: Consider whether you have the skills and expertise in-house to bring your vision to life. If so, you may want to consider using your internal resources to handle some or all of the work.
Look for partners with relevant experience: When searching for partners, look for those with experience in areas relevant to your website and goals. This could include experience in your or parallel industries, or with websites that are similar to what you are trying to create.
Evaluate portfolios: Review the portfolios of potential partners to see examples of their work and assess their level of skill and expertise.
Request references: Ask potential partners for references from previous clients, and follow up with these references to learn more about their experience working with the partner.
Consider compatibility: When choosing partners, it is important to consider compatibility. You want to work with partners who understand your vision and share your values.
Negotiate terms: Once you have identified potential partners, negotiate terms that are favorable for both parties. This could include project timelines, budgets, and responsibilities.
In conclusion, setting goals for your website is a crucial step in ensuring its success. By following these five steps, you can begin to create a clear roadmap for your website while ensuring it is aligned with your business objectives.
Can CyberCletch be your partner? We’d love to know! Schedule a gratis consult to determine if our skills match your needs.
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