Website Performance Goals
Digital marketing is an essential part a successful website. It helps you reach new customers, increase qualified traffic to your site, and boost sales. To get the most out of the time, money and effort you put into digital marketing, it's essential to set performance goals for your website. What's the first step? What is it that You Want to Accomplish? When setting performance goals for your website, it's important to identify what you want to achieve.
Even the most sophisticated companies can struggle to understand which metrics matter to them. Naturally, this can be difficult because there are a variety of KPIs and marketing metrics that you can measure. Some of the most common include:
- Website traffic
- Conversions
- Leads
- Sales
- Website engagement
- User retention
What is it that you'd like to see happen? Once you have identified your desired outcomes, you can create a plan.
Begin with the Research
Researching your target audience, industry trends and competitors is key when setting performance goals for your website.
Target Audience. Your target audience is individuals likely to want/need/use your products and services. What problems can you help them solve? How can you make their lives easier? To find out this information you can do things that include:
- Using survey data
- Reviewing website analytics
- Conducting focus groups
- Interviewing individuals with customer knowledge (Example: Meeting with your sales team that regularly speaks to customers)
Once you truly understand who your target customers are, you can create content that speaks directly to them.
Industry Trends. To be competitive, you need to know what is currently happening in your industry and how it affects your target audience. Stay up-to-date with the latest news and developments in your field. Monitor industry-specific websites and publications, as well as industry forums and social media. Attend industry events and conferences to gain insights into what's working and what's not. By staying abreast of industry trends, you can adjust your website marketing tactics as needed.
Competitors. What are your closest competitors doing? Is it working? This information can help you determine the direction you need to go regarding digital marketing and your website. You can use various tools to analyze your competitors' websites, content, and social media accounts. Additionally, it's important to track how your competitors are marketing their websites, such as through organic search, paid ads, and email campaigns. By analyzing your competitors, you can gain valuable insights into how to optimize your website marketing.
Set Realistic Expectations
Setting realistic expectations for your website performance is an essential part of creating a successful digital marketing strategy. It's important to consider both the desired outcome and the resources available to achieve it. Start by defining the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you want to measure and analyze, such as website traffic, conversions, and customer lifetime value. Then, think about the time and energy you can devote to achieving your goals and objectives. For example, if you only have a limited budget for marketing metrics, it might be more realistic to focus on one or two specific KPIs rather than trying to measure too many things at once. Factor in how long it will take to reach each goal, and adjust your timeline if needed.
Set Milestones
Milestones are an important part of any website's performance goals. They help you break up larger goals into smaller, more achievable tasks that can be tracked and measured. By setting smaller goals, you can determine if you are making progress towards your larger objectives.
How do you set milestones?
First, list out your long-term business goals. These should be specific and measurable; for example, increasing your customer base by 10% or launching a new product or service within six months.
After you list your long-term goals, set smaller, achievable milestones.
For example, if your long-term goal is to increase your customer base by 10%, one milestone goal could be attending a trade show industry event to make new connections and meet potential customers.
Create a Tracking System
In order to keep track of your website's performance goals, you need to set up a tracking system. You can use tools like Google Analytics to monitor your website performance and measure key metrics such as page views, time spent on the site, bounce rate, and the number of conversions.
If your goal is to increase sales, then you should track the number of leads generated, cost per lead, conversion rates, and cost per conversion. You can also track customer satisfaction and loyalty by measuring customer retention rates and customer lifetime value.
By tracking these metrics regularly, you can identify areas of improvement and adjust your digital marketing strategy accordingly. This will help you reach your goals faster and maximize the return on investment (ROI) from your online efforts.
Compare the current year's performance with the previous. Have you increased website traffic or sales? Have you grown your customer base? Did you achieve your milestones? The answers to these questions will determine how successful you were.
We would love to help you identify and execute business goals in your digital transformation journey.