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Writing specific goals is the only way to know if your website is being successful.
One of the first things I ask new clients is "What are your expectations for your site?" Understanding what they feel is success will ensure that I address their specific needs and desires. If I fail to address their needs, they will not be satisfied with the end result.
Anytime a business spends money, someone should be accountable for the return on investment. A website is no different. However, what type of return are you trying to get from building a website? What are you really trying to accomplish with your website? Three things your site should strive to do is inform, provide contact information, and entertain. Setting specific goals for your website will help you with all aspects of your website. These include, what colors, layout, images, expected revenue increase, etc.
If your goal is to obtain new customers, your site should be built around keywords that new customers would use to search for your site. It should also be built with the colors, images, layout that your new customers will find attractive and appropriate. It should address the 5-9 main questions that new customers have about your product. As you can see your goals determine your actions.
Once you have set your goals, you should break the goal into smaller, obtainable mini goals that will act as milestones along the path to your goal. As you track your successes and failures in these mini goals you will know where you need to make adjustments and corrections to make sure you achieve your main goal. If you fail to track your progress, you might as well not have made a goal.
These goals should be clearly stated and visible all of the time. You should also show exactly how and when you will evaluate your progress.
If you have failed to create a goal for your website, make it today. Don't wait. Evaluating your successes and failures will help you know what you can do to fix and improve your website. Otherwise, you will never be satisfied with the results.
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Filed Under: Website Goals, Images, Evaluation, Website Design
Please feel free to leave a comment or question about the article
"Goals - What is the Real Purpose of Your Website"
Comments
2
Morfaw
I find this article very interesting and I thank you for making it available on your website. It will be very useful to me and I will quote you to friends and other researchers.
3
Elie
I liked your point about mini goals, however I was curious to know if you had an example??
We recently dealt with some clients and who had differing opinions on the goals they wanted to track, and were developing a site based around a set of website goals that didn´t actually match their objective!
What do you think? We wrote about it in a case study we did on the effects of ill-defined goals and their relation to project time and budget.
Thanks for the post, and the insight!
-Elie
1
mikebawden
This is a great post. I´ve included it in my summary of interesting blog posts on marketing and related fields for Monday . You can find the post by visiting our "Much Ado About Marketing" blog (http://muchadoaboutmarketing.com).
Thanks again,
Mike Bawden
Brand Central Station