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Why You Should Set Goals For Your Website (+ Practical Examples!)

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When you’re building or optimizing a website for your business, you want it to be the best it can be. But, what exactly does that mean? Are you looking to increase total visitors to your website, or would you rather focus on boosting brand awareness? Do you want to redesign and refresh your existing website or build a new one from scratch?

Today we’ll discuss why website goals matter and walk you through a few questions to ask yourself when you’re building a website so you can identify the why behind your website. We’ll also lay out a few examples of goals you can set and some tips for making sure they’re effective for your unique site.

Why Website Goals Matter

Setting and working towards the right goals for your unique site can be the foundation of your business’ overall success. 

Most importantly, setting clear goals guides the direction and purpose of your website as you construct it and make updates over time. Having defined goals also ensures that your site lines up with your target audience’s wants and needs. 

Setting goals for your website can also save you time and money. Knowing what you want for your site before beginning the development process ensures that precious resources are used on the things that matter most to you. It’s much easier to build something correctly from the beginning than go back and change things up later on. 

It’s also crucial to ensure your company’s teams are fully aligned when working towards shared goals. Keeping different teams like IT, sales, and marketing on the same track can save your company from confusion (and even a financial headache in some cases). Using clear, open lines of communication and checking in with everyone regularly can help everyone feel supported and on the same page.

Questions to Ask Yourself When Building a Site

Narrowing down exactly what you want out of your website is one of the first steps to setting effective goals. That said, it can be overwhelming knowing where to start, especially if you’ve never established goals for your site in the past. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself when thinking about your website and what your business needs out of it.

  1. Why am I considering a site rebuild or refresh? 

  2. What is (or is not) working on the site as is? How do I keep what is working and change what isn’t?

  3. What action(s) do I want users to take on my website?

  4. What are my overall marketing goals for the year? 

  5. What is my overarching vision for my business or brand?

These questions aren’t exhaustive and they may not work for every business, but they can help get you started. Consider circulating these questions among a curated panel with your team to evaluate what you want out of your site. The more in-depth you’re able to go about what you’re hoping for, the better!

Types of Goals

Every business will have distinct, unique goals for their site. While bigger companies tend to focus more on generating conversions, smaller organizations may want to start off by increasing overall brand awareness. It’s important to remember that your goals don’t have to be set in stone. They may change and develop throughout the website production process, and that’s okay!

Here are 10 examples of goals that can be built upon when working on your site. You can make each of these goals as specific or generic as your business needs. 

1. Increase brand awareness

2. Drive more organic traffic

3. Generate more quality leads

4. Increase conversions

5. Capture lead information

6. Improve user engagement

7. Improve customer satisfaction

8. Reduce bounce rate

9. Raise domain authority

10. Optimize site with SEO

Tips for Measuring Goal Success

Setting your goals isn’t the last stage of the process. It’s important to evaluate progress to ensure that they’re working properly for your business. Here are a few tips for measuring your goal’s effectiveness. 

Remember the SMART acronym

SMART goals are a proven method for setting effective, trackable goals. The acronym stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based. Double checking that your website goals are in line with each of these components helps ensure that they’re realistic.

Assign a KPI for each goal

KPIs, or key performance indicators, are quantifiable metrics that can help you see progress on specific goals. They’re also great for helping set future goals to work towards. 

For example, let’s say you’re hoping for increased sales on your website. Setting and evaluating conversion KPIs allows your team to see the user bounce rate, cost per conversion, and more. Setting a KPI for each website goal will give you a base for future evaluation and help you to see if what you’re doing is working well (or not). 

Analyze goal progress on a set schedule

Put together a schedule of when you’ll take time to look at your goal progress. You may want to analyze data every day or week for short term projects, while longer term goals may require monthly evaluations. You should always plan to review in depth annually, typically in tandem with your fiscal year. Keeping a set schedule for analysis encourages accountability and helps ensure that you’re staying on track. 

Remember that not every goal may be successful (and that’s okay!)

Not every single one of your goals may work out for you. It’s important to learn from your mistakes just as much as you celebrate from your successes. If you find it’s difficult to routinely meet a goal, you might need to aim for something more realistic — or, in some cases, you may have found an area for process or product improvement!

434 Marketing Is Here To Help You Meet Your Website Goals. 

Whether you’re looking to build your first-ever website from scratch or you’re looking to optimize your current website, 434 Marketing is here to help you. Our team has more than four decades of combined experience in web design and development, content production, market analysis, and project management. Let us help get your site optimized for increased traffic, conversion rates, and higher revenue. Contact us today for more information!

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