{"id":7196,"date":"2014-04-16T15:56:29","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T22:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/?p=7196"},"modified":"2014-04-16T16:06:14","modified_gmt":"2014-04-16T23:06:14","slug":"determining-the-goal-of-your-business-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/determining-the-goal-of-your-business-website\/","title":{"rendered":"Determining the goal of your business website"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Considering and defining the main goal of your website is one of the most important tasks of site-building. Before you start thinking about <a title=\"Picking the Right Brand Colors for Your Website\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/picking-the-right-brand-colors-for-your-website\/\" target=\"_blank\">color schemes<\/a> or <a title=\"Is your homepage content doing its job effectively?\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/is-your-homepage-content-doing-its-job-effectively\/\" target=\"_blank\">copywriting<\/a>, you should first work out what you hope to achieve by creating a site.<\/p>\n<p>Think of your favorite websites. <a title=\"What Makes a Good Website\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/what-makes-a-good-website\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sites you consider to be \u201cgood\u201d<\/a> are likely ones that have been well thought out with clearly defined goals.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why are website goals important?<\/strong><br \/>\nBefore we delve into how to craft website goals, let\u2019s first understand why they are important to have in the first place. Goals can help you work out a number of important things including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Target audience<\/strong> \u2013 Defining goals for your site helps you determine exactly who your target audience is, what their challenges are, and what they deem important.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Crafting effective content<\/strong> \u2013 Knowing more about your target audience will help you to develop <a title=\"Understanding your audience: Creating online personas\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/understanding-your-audience-creating-online-personas\/\" target=\"_blank\">online personas<\/a>, allowing you to create effective content that speaks directly to your audience.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Website organization<\/strong> \u2013 Once you know the main goals of your site, you can effectively organize and <a title=\"How to effectively prioritize content on your website\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/how-to-effectively-prioritize-content-on-your-website\/\" target=\"_blank\">prioritize content<\/a>, thus guiding visitors where you want them to go in order to achieve these goals.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Success measurement<\/strong> \u2013 Clearly defined goals help you to understand how \u00a0effective your site actually is. Once defined, you can measure whether your site has met, surpassed or underachieved on its goals.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A good place to start when determining the goals of your website is the goal for your business overall. Your website goals should be an extension of the goals you\u2019ve set for your business as a whole. If a business is purely online, then the business and website goals will be quite similar.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How to create effective website goals<\/strong><br \/>\nWebsite goals will vary considerably from site to site, in the same way that overall business goals vary from business to business. To give an example, an online seller and an interior designer will have very different website goals. Online retailers are likely to center around driving sales via website, whereas the goal of an interior designer might focus more on\u00a0 showcasing their work and generating leads. That being said, the process used in order to define goals should be the same \u2013 they should both use the S.M.A.R.T model.<\/p>\n<p>S.M.A.R.T is a mnemonic for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7197\" alt=\"Smart goal concept for setting management objectives\" src=\"https:\/\/blogcontent.yola.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Fotolia_37874586_XS.jpg\" width=\"282\" height=\"425\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s look at each of these in more detail:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Specific<\/strong> \u2013 An effective website goal should specifically state what you are hoping to accomplish. A goal shouldn\u2019t be to simply \u201cincrease sales.\u201d If the goal is to do this, it should be specific and detail by how much, such as increasing sales by 10%.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Measurable<\/strong> \u2013 In order to know whether a goal has been achieved, it has to be measurable. This could be knowing the revenue generated through your website or the number of people that visited the site. Website analytics will help you <a title=\"How to Measure Your Site\u2019s Success\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/how-to-measure-your-sites-success\/\" target=\"_blank\">measure your site\u2019s success<\/a> and can help you to put numbers around your goal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Attainable<\/strong> \u2013 An effective goal should be attainable and realistic \u2013 one you have a chance of achieving. Although being ambitious and having something to work toward is good, setting a goal that is unachievable is meaningless.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Relevant<\/strong> \u2013 Goals should be relevant to the overall objective of the business. As mentioned, website goals should be influenced heavily by and should help to achieve the goals of the business as a whole.<br \/>\n<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Time-bound<\/strong> \u2013 Making a date when you would like the goal achieved by, helps to focus your efforts on an end point, giving something to work toward. Again, the timeframe should be realistic as well as measurable and attainable.<\/p>\n<p>If we take the online retailer from the example above, by using the S.M.A.R.T. model, the goal could change from: \u201cI would like to increase sales for new products,\u201d to: \u201cI would like to increase the sales of products X, Y, and Z by 25% over the next 3 months.\u201d Likewise the interior designer\u2019s goal could go from: \u201cI would like to create awareness about the services I offer and generate leads\u201d to: \u201cI would like to increase the number of first time visitors to my website by 10%, and receive 200 form submission inquiries by July 2014.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Put some thought into your own website goals. If you already have them defined, do they match that of the S.M.A.R.T. model?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Considering and defining the main goal of your website is one of the most important tasks of site-building. Before you start thinking about color schemes or copywriting, you should first work out what you hope to achieve by creating a site. Think of your favorite websites. Sites you consider to be \u201cgood\u201d are likely ones&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/determining-the-goal-of-your-business-website\/\" class=\"\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Determining the goal of your business website<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":400,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","neve_meta_reading_time":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false},"categories":[130],"tags":[726,315,297,724,725,723],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/400"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7196"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7199,"href":"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7196\/revisions\/7199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yola.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}