In the modern digital business landscape, merely having a good-looking website is no longer enough. And if you’re setting up your site for the first time, or redesigning an existing site, it is critical you do so with specific website goals in mind.
Your website goals and objectives depend on your business and how your website fits into your broader marketing strategy. By identifying and setting objectives specific to your business needs, you will have a website that actively pushes your business forwards. Instead of sitting prettily on the sidelines.
As an experienced web developer and digital business owner, I’ve worked with countless other entrepreneurs on their websites. And the one thing that always sticks out is how much of difference setting clear website goals can make. If you’re not sure what your website goals and objectives should be, this article will help you set and understand them to ensure you have a successful online presence.
What are Common Websites Objectives?
Your website goals and objectives will depend on your business but they’ll probably be one of these 5:
- Increased revenue – getting more money into your bank account each month
- Decreased costs – cutting back where you can so you end up with more money at the end of the month
- Improved customer satisfaction – keeping people happy so they keep coming back for more
- Reduced workload – give yourself more time to do the things you love
- Increasing brand awareness – get more eyeballs on your awesome digital business
This is a very general view of what your website should be achieving. To ensure your website objectives are going to help your business progress, we need to dig deeper.
Setting SMART Website Goals
To make sure the goals and objectives you set for your digital business website are actually going to move the needle and help you to grow, I recommend using the SMART framework.
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. If you want to create and run a great website that serves you (and not the other way around) then setting SMART website goals is critical.
Let’s break each of these areas down individually:
Specific
Here you want pin-sharp clarity on very specific, small areas of your website. This gives you focus, motivation and avoids wasting your precious time and resources.
For example, simply aiming to “increase website traffic in the next month” is very general. It doesn’t give any sense of what’s involved or what an increase actually means – would 1 extra visitor be enough or 1000?
Instead, you want to be clear about what (and why) you want to accomplish, whether it involves just you or other people, and what you’ll need in order to do it.
So a more Specific version of the original example would be to “increase organic search traffic by 15% in the next month by publishing 10 additional blog posts”. As you can see, this is a much more hyper-focused, specific goal that allows you to focus the necessary resources on content creation to achieve this.
Measurable
Making your website goals measurable means you must be able to use concrete data to check your progress. This can draw on resources like your Google Analytics, open rates through your mail service provider, or you’re own knowledge/experience.
Examples of a measurable objective would be “a 10% increase in sales of my main offer in the next month” or “300 leads generated in the next 6 months.”
If a goal isn’t measurable, how would you know if you’ve achieved it? Plus it gives you a point at which you can crack open the champagne and give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back.
Achievable
If you’re currently making $1000 per month, then saying “I’d like to make $10M in the next month” is big goal to set. And, more importantly, it’s also wildly unachievable, barring a lottery win.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to aim high – and you should. But constantly missing out on your website’s goals because they were unattainable in the first place is incredibly demotivating.
Set a target you think you can hit with the right work. It might be at the upper end of what you can do, but it should still be a realistic possibility. Over time, the big targets like those big income months will eventually come.
One important tip here is not to set goals that someone else controls. For example, “strengthen my backlink profile with a feature in the New York Times” relies on an editor including you in their publication. But “pitch my digital business to journalists from 3 major online publications” is entirely down to you.
Relevant
There’s no point in nailing all your targets if they aren’t relevant to what your business needs to grow.
For example, getting 1M impressions in Google search is great. But if the number of website visitors hasn’t also increased then it’s not relevant.
Instead, stay focused on things that will make a noticeable difference and avoid “vanity metrics”.
Time-Bound
Giving a clear timeframe to achieve your objectives adds a sense of urgency to your work and a set point in time to move toward. This can also create accountability, help you focus on what is important and avoid smaller, less important tasks from getting in the way.
Setting clear and sensible deadlines is important to keep things moving forward. Especially if your digital business is a side hustle.
Just remember to keep them realistic. For example, if your goal is to write and publish 10 blog posts and each one takes you 3 hours in total, don’t set a goal to complete them all within 20 hours.
Putting Them Together
By combining these factors and using the SMART framework, you can ensure your goal-setting is going to help your business succeed. It will keep you focused and motivated on tasks that will make a big difference to your digital business. This is key for consistent growth.
Setting your Website Goals
Here, we’ll break down each of the 5 most common website objectives and how you can implement them within your digital business:
1. Increase Revenue
The journey and steps involved in increasing revenue through your website can happen in a few different ways. Examples include:
- Increasing the number of visitors to your site. If you have a 30% purchase rate for your $100 digital product, then an extra 1000 visitors every week means an extra $3000 in your account every week too.
- Increasing website conversion rate. If the number of visitors remains the same but 50% go on to make a purchase instead of 30%, you’ll be making bank.
- Increasing lead generation. Adding an extra 300 people to your mailing list means an extra 300 purchase-ready people you can sell to.
Many digital business owners put off SEO as a job for tomorrow without realizing the damaging impacts this can have. By improving your website’s technical SEO, you can appear higher in the Google search rankings and reduce your website bounce rate. The result? More traffic that also sticks around. Which means more chances to increase your revenue.
Getting people to visit your site is just one piece of the puzzle – they also need to buy what you’re selling. This is where click rate optimization (CRO) comes in. Examples include using color psychology on your buttons/links to make them pop or improving your sales copy. Even a small increase in conversions can mean a lot more revenue, especially on your big-ticket offers.
Hint:
If you don’t know where to start, why not book a Technical SEO Audit and I will take a peek beneath the covers and see where you could improve your site?
Having an email list that you show up for is an absolute gold mine. The best way to capture more email addresses is a better lead magnet – a useful freebie that encourages people to leave their precious email in return. Be really focused here with multiple lead magnets all targeted for different pages/ users’ needs.
Example goals:
- Capture 150 email addresses in the next month
- Increase my big ticket conversion rate to 10% next month
- Increase overall sales by 30% in the next quarter
2. Decrease Costs
This is simple math – if you make the same amount of money but you spend less, then you have more leftover.
But cutting costs can be one of the hardest things to do as a digital business owner. Often there aren’t many costs involved but they all seem “necessary” particularly when it comes to tech.
There are however ways that your website could help you keep your spending down.
For example, if you’re currently paying a VA to schedule appointments and look after your diary, a new website could automate that process.
Or maybe you’re paying for premium themes and plug-ins to run elements on your business website that a professionally designed site can do instead. Reducing plugins will not only keep your costs down but will also make your site run faster too.
Example goals:
- Reduce freelancer costs by 20% over the next 6 months
- Reduce website costs by $50 per month with a redesign
3. Improve Customer Satisfaction
The best marketing you can have is word of mouth. Social proof is critical for increasing sales as people are more likely to buy something that has been recommended by a friend or colleague.
The customer experience of working with you starts as soon as they hit your web page. Having a slow, confusing, or just awkward website can impact their overall impression of your business.
Ensuring the customer journey is as smooth as possible will ensure every client starts off with a great impression of your business. Conversely, having a slow, complicated, or confusing website will put people off. Even those who end up using your services may complain about the site, costing you sales from referrals.
Example goals:
- Improve average customer feedback score to 4.0 by next quarter
- Increase the number of referrals from existing customers by 15% in the next 6 months
4. Reduce Your Workload
Work to fund your lifestyle, don’t make work your entire life.
Reducing your workload gives you more free time to relax meaning you show up as the best business owner you possibly can be. Or it allows you to focus on new ventures or revenue streams for your business. Either way, this is one of the best things your website can – and should – do for you.
This might involve automating processes that you currently do manually so that you’re not bogged down with admin. It could be creating sales funnels to increase your passive income. Or maybe it’s selling digital products on autopilot so you can make money even whilst you’re on the beach.
Example goals:
- Reduce time spent on admin by 20 hours next month
- Reduce time spent on “active income” by 20% next quarter without any loss of revenue
5. Increase Brand Awareness
While it’s rare for a digital business to have a website solely for increasing brand awareness, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a goal of your site.
Adding a blog to your site can drastically increase the number of visitors. Many of them may not be customers at the time of reading your blog articles, but they might be by the time they leave. Ultimately, it’s a great way to get your brand out there.
You can also look to capture leads whilst they’re reading your blog to get more people into your sales funnels. Or add a new revenue stream altogether through affiliate marketing.
The number of places that you show up for your potential customers and provide value increases the chances of them remembering you in the future. Additionally, having a strong online presence across multiple channels increases trust from your users and the Google algorithm.
Another way to increase brand awareness is through a strong social media presence which can be integrated into your website. Start by identifying the platform your potential customers are using then build a presence there. This will increase your overall reach, bring in more referral traffic to your website and ultimately more sales.
Example goals:
- Get 1000 page views on my blog posts next week
- Increase article shares on social media by 50% in the next 3 months
How a Better Website can Help you Achieve Your Goals
Better User Experience
Your website is often the first contact a customer has with your business. And you never get a second chance at a first impression.
Ensuring your website is fast, responsive and optimized for mobile will ensure that they have a positive experience. This is crucial for increasing sales, customer satisfaction and brand awareness.
It’s also vital that you understand the user journey and guide them through the site. There’s nothing worse than wanting to find a key piece of information but not knowing where it’s hidden on a business’ website.
Accessibility
Closely linked to your overall user experience, you have to make your website accessible. People with disabilities or poor eyesight need to be able to navigate your site quickly and easily.
A website that fails to be accessible to all users is not just turning away potential revenue, it’s also breaking the law.
This can be as simple as choosing the right font size and color contrasts for easy reading, using descriptive links, including alt tags on photos, and subtitles on videos. There are also plug-ins available that offer a range of accessibility options like allowing anyone to listen to your articles.
Increase Traffic With On-Site SEO
The more people who see your page, the more opportunities you have for generating leads and making sales. So by getting all your on-page SEO ducks in a row, you can increase your rankings in Google search without adding any new content.
You can also write regular blog posts for low-difficulty keywords within your niche. Getting visitors to your blog posts gets your brand in front of a lot more people. This increases brand awareness, establishes authority and ultimately increases sales.
Want help with your on-page SEO, why not grab my FREE checklist? It’s a double win – you can easily improve your search rankings and I can reach my website goals and objectives of increasing my email subscribers!
Increase Email Subscribers
Getting email subscribers is the best way to make sales. It isn’t determined by anyone’s algorithm and is just about the only piece of data in this digital world that you truly own. With you mailing list, you can target specific products and services, and build trust with potential clients.
Having the right sales copy and design will increase the number of email addresses you capture. Pushing more people into your sales funnels will increase revenue.
Final Thoughts
Knowing what your website goals and objectives are is crucial to having your website be a true asset to your business. It should be the first step any digital business owner takes when deciding what they want.
Focusing on a few key goals that will move the needle for your digital business can drastically improve the performance of an existing site. Or can ensure your new site makes a big difference to your overall revenue.
