Here’s three key questions for setting successful goals for your website, so that your website will make you money instead of wasting money.
Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.
Earl Nightingale, “The Strangest Secret”
The curse of unclear goals
If you have a business website, are you sure it’s meeting your goals? Unless you’re crystal clear on what your goals are for your website, you’ll never know if your website is helping you win, or just helping you waste money.
Three important questions for setting successful goals
Here’s three questions to ask yourself when it comes to setting successful goals for your website:
- Who is your target customer?
- What do you want them to do?
- How do you want them to do it?
Let’s take a closer look at each of those questions.
Who is your target customer?
Your target customers: who are they? Where do they live? What’s their economic status? Are they home-owners or renters? Are they married or single? What’s their primary language?
A mistake I often see is when businesses try to target everyone. It’s a good idea to serve everyone, but when you intentionally try to target everyone, you can end up missing everyone because you have nowhere specific to aim.
What do you want them to do?
After you figure out your target customer, you need to decide what you want them to do? Knowing this will help you in making decisions of what should be the primary call-to-action, and what shouldn’t.
Do you want them to buy your product? Then you want a clear call-to-action button to buy your product. And you don’t want to distract them with buttons to Instagram to see photos of your puppy.
Do you want them to get a quote for service? Then you want a clear call-to-action button to get a quote for service. And you don’t want to bury them with paragraph upon paragraph about when your company was founded.
Do you want them to contact you? Then you want a clear call-to-action button to contact you? And you don’t want to leave them at the dead end of a page with nowhere to go.
How do you want them to do it?
Once you’ve decided who your target audience is and what you want them to do, you need to decide how you want them to do it? You’re calling them to action, but what specific action do you want them to take?
If you’re a service industry and you’ve discovered it’s easier dealing with emails than phone calls, then your calls-to-action should be to email or submit a form, rather than make a phone call.
Likewise, if your business requires particular information from each customer before you an complete a sale, then you want them to go through a particular process, which might be better guided through an interactive form rather than just sending an email message.
Recapping setting successful goals
So here’s three important questions when it comes to setting successful goals for your website:
- Who is your target customer?
- What do you want them to do?
- How do you want them to do it?
Is your website hitting your goals?
How’s your website when it comes to hitting your goals? Get a free assessment of your website by completing this easy form that asks you questions like the ones above.