Your website should work as hard as you do for your business. But how do you know that it’s performing the way you need it to? By setting realistic and attainable goals for your website, you can track, measure, and analyze its success while identifying what you can improve as you grow. So before you begin building your site, take some time to think about your website goals, how you want to achieve them, and the tools you’ll need to help measure your success.
Identifying your website goals begins with aligning your business goals. That’s because a site is about much more than just opening an account with a web hosting company or buying a domain. It’s key to growing your new venture, which is why it’s so important to ensure your website goals and business goals are in lock-step. Some common business goals that can also serve as website goals include:
For example, if your accounting firm is transitioning to a fully digital registration process, your website is the main tool you’ll use to send and collect form submissions online. Similarly, if you want to generate more leads for your insurance agency, a website opens up another avenue for potential customers to find you, ask questions, and decide if you’re the right agent for their needs.
If you’re not sure what your website goals are, a great place to start is to develop SMART goals. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This provides a roadmap to achieving your website goals.
If your website goal is to simply “generate more leads,” for example, you’ll need much more detail to create an effective plan and ultimately decide whether you’ve met your goal.
However, if your goal is to “increase lead generation by 20% in Q1 2023 through website marketing, tools, and optimization,” you now have a great roadmap to begin your journey! In this example, your goal is:
With a SMART goal in place, you can then properly measure website success against its performance in the time period you set.
Your website goals don’t need to all be accomplished at once — after all, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Instead, think of what you want to achieve with your website as something that can be broken down into smaller bits. You can have annual, quarterly, monthly, and even weekly or daily goals for your website — just make sure each goal is a SMART one.
If you’re ready to set goals for your website but you’re not sure where to start, consider the following options and think about how you can apply them to your own site. A SMART example is included for each goal to help you narrow your focus and begin planning.
What is this goal? Conversions are the number of visitors who take the desired action when they come to your site. This could be filling out an interest form, signing up for emails, buying a product, or any other end goal you have for your site.
How can it help your business grow? Conversions are what turn casual browsers into serious prospects. When someone takes an action on your site, it’s a sign that they’re truly interested in what you have to offer. This, in turn, helps increase the number of leads you can then reach out to.
SMART goal example: “I want to increase website conversions by 10% within the next 6 months by building landing pages on my website that appeal to my target customers and encourage them to call me.”
What is this goal? Brand awareness refers to a potential customer’s familiarity with your brand. The actions you take to let more people know who you are, what you offer, and why you’re different from competitors can increase brand awareness.
How can it help your business grow? Even if someone doesn’t need your products or services right now, they might in the future. To that end, brand awareness serves an important purpose: elevating your profile to alert people that you’re open for business.
SMART goal example: “I want to increase my company’s brand awareness by engaging in an advertising campaign that boosts website traffic by 40%.”
What is this goal? Your website traffic is the total number of visitors in a given time period. A goal to increase traffic means that you want to bring more visitors to your business’s website, whether or not they convert.
How can it help your business grow? Increasing traffic has the dual effect of raising brand awareness while also creating opportunities to convert some of your new visitors into customers. With this goal in mind, you can shape your marketing strategy to meet the goal of bringing more visitors to your site. This can be done through advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, guest blogging, and a number of other avenues.
SMART goal example: “I want to increase website traffic by 20% by the end of the next quarter by regularly publishing SEO-optimized website content.”
What is this goal? Improving content quality involves reviewing the content you plan to publish on your site (or existing content if you’ve already launched your website). You should also double-check all content for accuracy and the value it provides to the reader.
How can it help your business grow? The content on your website serves several important purposes. It can provide information or make the case to work with your company. It can also help elevate your business’s search engine rankings — more on that later. Whatever the purpose, though, quality is central to content success. Informative, interesting, and well-written content drives your business forward.
SMART goal example: “I wish to overhaul my website by the beginning of the new year by undergoing an assessment of our website content, evaluating competitors, and publishing updated content. I will then track analytics to assess performance.”
What is this goal? This initiative shapes marketing activities and website design around the intended goal of getting more visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter.
How can it help your business grow? By building an email list, you can nurture leads and learn more about current and potential customers. Email is also one of the many user-friendly lead-generation tools any company or individual can use. When sending targeted emails, you can increase brand awareness and encourage purchases at the same time.
SMART goal example: “I want to increase the number of email subscribers for my business by 10% within three months by offering customers a 10% coupon in exchange for signing up.”
What is this goal? This goal requires taking specific actions to have your business appear higher in search results on sites like Google and Bing.
How can it help your business grow? Your website — especially a website that ranks highly — is one of the most important touchpoints for potential customers to learn about you and for you to convince them why you’re different. By taking action to improve your search engine rankings, you’re more likely to reach, and eventually win over, new customers.
SMART goal example: “I want to increase my total organic traffic by 20% within 6 months by writing blog content that targets my audience.”
What is this goal? If there are certain time-consuming tasks associated with your business, implementing tools on your website can allow you to automate some processes to free up time.
How can it help your business grow? Your website can help make daily business operations easier. That’s because the right business tools save you time and money, and many of these tools integrate into your website. For example, you can use them to automate client onboarding tasks.
SMART goal example: “By the end of the year, I want to save three hours a week by migrating client onboarding to an online form that automatically uploads to my database.”
What is this goal? This goal helps you increase the amount of original and informative content on your website.
How can it help your business grow? Blogs play a central role in search engine optimization. Optimized blog entries can help your site rank higher for certain keywords relevant to your business. It also provides you with content you can use to market your business on social media.
SMART goal example: “I want to write and publish 1 blog a week by setting aside time each Friday to brainstorm and write.”
Now that you have some website goals in mind, you’ll need the right tools to help you track, measure, and analyze how your website is performing. There are a number of free and paid tools available that help you measure important website metrics and use that data to grow your business. Below are four helpful tools to try.
Google Analytics is a free tool that integrates with your website to monitor its traffic and as well as consumer behaviors. Through Google Analytics, you can see where your visitors are coming from geographically, how they found your website, which pages they visit, on which page they “exit” your website, and more. These metrics can all be used to help continually improve your website.
Google Search Console is another free tool that can be regarded as a cousin to Analytics. Search Console monitors your website for technical errors, helps you fix issues, and ensures the Google search engine is properly reviewing your site and displaying it in search results. With Search Console, you can catch errors before they affect search engine rankings or are noticed by customers.
Whether they’re gathered through the platform itself or through a third party, social media metrics can help you measure which channels are best for bringing visitors to your website. The information these insight tools provide can help you determine which types of posts perform well, as well as which platforms are bringing the most traffic to your website. You can use the Meta Business Suite to get information on your Facebook and Instagram accounts, for example, or try a third party like Sprout Social for more insights.
It’s important to know what your customers are searching for and how your competitors are performing online. Keyword research tools can show you not just what’s being searched online, but also the popularity of the search terms and estimates of how many searches per month are conducted for those keywords. You can use this information to improve your SEO, build a blog strategy, or just get a better idea of the questions your customers have — and think of ways to answer them. There are several free and paid options available. SEMRush is an example of a paid tool, while Bulk Keyword Generator is an example of a free keyword research tool.
A website that appeals to your customers begins with a great design. And thankfully, you don’t need to be a web developer or pay tens of thousands of dollars to make an impact online. Through Namecheap Site Maker, you can register a domain, access web hosting, and use an intuitive drag-and-drop builder that can help you create a website in minutes. Once you launch your site, you’ll be ready to meet and exceed your goals in no time.
To choose the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your website, determine which ones are mostly closely aligned with your goals. For example, having a high number of visitors doesn’t necessarily equate to sales, so you may want to focus on conversions to get a better sense of how effective your website is.
In Google Analytics 4 (GA4), you can select specific goals and set up tracking to monitor key events like page views and button clicks. Configure specific events as conversions to track your website goals in the tool.
Website objectives are the specific, measurable targets you want your website to achieve, like a specific number of online sales per month. Website goals, on the other hand, are broader aims you hope your site achieves over the long term, like boosting brand visibility and increasing customer loyalty.
From content creation to SEO, here’s everything you need find customers and keep them.
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