Website goals

Based on your business goals and your ideal customer or customer types, what will success look like on your website? Define your website goals to measure your success in terms of “conversions.”

For example:

Goal: Provide current or potential customers with information

A site to meet this goal could be simple, with information on your business—an online brochure. Success would be reports from customers that they found the site helpful. Conversions can be measured by number of pages viewed, average number of pages viewed per visit, average amount of time spent on the site per visit. If you often provide fresh content, as in a blog, you can measure the number of repeat visitors.

Goal: Generate new leads

If getting new leads is your goal, you will want to provide information, but also solicit responses. Success would be the acquisition of new leads or customers through the website. Conversions can be measured by number of visitors who made an online request or as a result of your website telephoned you for more information, who provided you with their contact information, and a description of their need.

Goal: Sell products and/or services

If your goal is to sell products and/or services, you will want to provide information about the features and benefits of your offerings plus a shopping cart or some online ordering system. Success for an e-commerce site is when you are getting orders and making money. Conversions can be measured by number of orders placed, revenues received. You can also measure the visitors who completed an order as a percentage of all visitors. And you can measure the percentage of visitors who abandoned the order process once they started, and where they went next.

Goal: Provide information to the public

Many people like to start sites about their hobbies or a public interest issue. Sometimes these can provide revenue through selling advertising space or through links to other sites (affiliates) that sell products, and your site gets a percentage of each sale resulting from following the link. Success would be having lots of traffic and getting good results from advertising and affiliates. Conversions would be measured in terms of page views, advertising revenue, number of visitors who followed links to affiliate sites, and affiliate revenue.

Choose your website goals.

The key to a successful website is carefully defining success and how it will be measured. You achieve success by trying new things and measuring results.

How do you do that?

Use the following items to score your website for website goals on a scale from 1-10.  When you answer the following questions to your satisfaction, give yourself the number of points listed after each. Include your own questions, if you like.

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