Blog
Website Goals
Published on Dec 16, 2008
Over the last couple weeks I taught a class about marketing your business online. One of the recurring themes of this class was the need for having goals for your website.
What is the primary goal of your website?
If you are struggling to find an answer to this question, chances are your website visitors are also struggling to figure out what it is you want them to do on your website. A website is interactive. As such you should be guiding your visitors through your website. What path they take will become very clear when you define goals for the website.
Why website goals are important
Quite simply, without clear goals, website projects can quickly become sprawling and unfocused. I’ve seen it many times over the years. The end result of not having goals is a website that has a lot of good information but no clear direction. Prioritizing this content becomes a challenge because there are no clear goals. If clear goals are established all of this becomes infinitely easier. It also will help make decisions to leave out certain content from the website that doesn’t contribute to these goals.
How many website goals should I have?
Not many. There should always be one and only one primary goal for a website. After that having a few secondary goals is helpful. Goals should be very targeted and focused. Wanting to tell people about the company is not a clear enough goal. Wanting to drive people to a request a quote form for a new service you offer is much more targeted and direct. Keep this in mind. Your website goals should brief in number and highly focused in definition.
Conclusion
Goals are the driving force behind any successful website. They direct everything from the design to the content to the structure of your website and help define clear action paths for your website visitors. Make sure your website has a clearly defined primary goal and no more than a few secondary goals.
You will thank me later.
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