Do you have clear goals for your business website in 2020?
Many business owners set vague objectives, like “we want a prettier website” or “we want to start using video” – but those are features, not goals. Don’t feel bad if you find yourself in the same boat. It’s incredibly common.
Coming up with goals for your website can feel weird. After all, it’s just where you write posts for your blog, right? It doesn’t actually do anything. Wrong.
Your website should be one of your largest sources of leads and sales. It should be a representative of your brand and improve customer satisfaction. If you’re just using it as a place to share a few articles or list promotions, you definitely need to set some goals.
Here’s how:
Start With Your Vision
When you started your company, you likely began by creating a brand vision. It should include items like your values, your future, and your purpose. It’s what you stand for and where you see yourself going in the future.
Why does that matter for your online presence? Well, because whatever you do on the web should reflect your bigger picture. If it doesn’t, you may be missing your target audience (and losing out on potential sales).
Create SMART Goals
Once you think about your vision, it should be easy to turn those objectives into goals. For instance:
Vision: To move from brick and mortar stores and be completely e-commerce based within the next five years.
Goal: Generate 20% of sales through your website during the next fiscal year.
But how do you turn them into SMART goals? And what exactly is a SMART goal?
SMART stands for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. That’s why a goal like the one mentioned above (“we want a prettier website”) wouldn’t really work. Sure, it might be relevant, but how do you measure something like that? And how can you tell if you’ve truly obtained something when the outcome is so subjective?
Here are some things you can measure:
- Bounce rate
- Time spent on page
- Click-through rate
- Inbound referrals
- And page views
Growth Goals For Your Website
Using the information we’ve provided, it should be much easier for you to set your own growth goals for 2020. But in case you need further inspiration, here are 4 ideas for goals you can easily track:
- Improve Lead Conversion Rate
- Generate More Sales
- Improve Customer Satisfaction
- Reduce Website Operating Costs
Improve Lead Conversion Rate
The lead conversion rate measures the effectiveness of your website (and the content on it) at converting audience members into qualified leads. This is a huge part of your sales funnel and is a good goal to focus on for inbound marketing campaigns. So how do you measure the percentage of website visitors who become prospects? In general, a visitor becomes a lead when they fill out a form (like an email signup or contact form), so those are the numbers you want to look at.
Generate More Sales
This one is pretty self-explanatory. If you run an e-commerce site, or even if you use your site to sign your clients up for workshops and seminars, your main goal is always to increase sales. You can easily choose a percentage rate (i.e. “increase online sales by 15% annually”) and track the numbers year-to-year. Note: by choosing an annual rate versus, say, a monthly one, you allow for seasonal fluctuations, holidays, and so on.
Improve Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is important because, without customers, you don’t have sales. Still, outside of testimonials or reviews, most people don’t know how to track it. One easy way to measure customer satisfaction is through surveys. If you’re planning a website redesign or changing up a popular product, consider sending out a survey both before and after so you can compare results. The goal would be to receive a higher percentage of positive responses after the change versus before.
Reduce Website Operating Costs
As business owners, it’s all about the bottom line. And web maintenance can cost a lot (in both time and money). Your company can set goals either way. For instance, spend 10% fewer man-hours on web support and maintenance annually. How would you do that? Hire an outside firm to take over routine duties, update systems so they run more smoothly, or automate all of the systems that you can (for instance, schedule automated backups instead of running them manually).
The options are nearly endless. Sit down, take some time, and think about what is really important to your company at this time. Setting goals upfront can help you determine if and what you need to change on your website before the year gets started.
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