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For many website owners, the success of their website is based on only one statistic: Traffic. Perhaps traffic should not be the primary goal for your site. Building traffic can take months (or years!) while improving your site’s conversion rate can be accomplished relatively quickly. After all, all the traffic in the world doesn’t do any good if the site’s visitors don’t complete specific actions during their visit.
When creating or redesigning a business website, you want to measure the benefits and success of the project. If you spend money and time building a website, you expect to receive a return on investment (ROI). To measure any return, you must have a clear goal defined to compare all actions to.
What is a website goal?
So, what is a website goal? Any website can have a goal:
- Buy a product
- Subscribe to a newsletter
- Request more information
- Contact your company
- View a photo album
- Download an image, document, or other file
- View a specific webpage
- Click a link or perform another action
How do you define your site’s goal?
Make a list of actions you want your site’s visitors to complete. Do you want them to purchase an item, order a service, or submit a contact form? How about sign up for your weekly newsletter or download a podcast?
Also, take a good hard look at who your audience is. Who do you want to market your product or service to? Are you actually reaching these people, or is your audience really a different group? Use analytics tools (Quantcast, Alexa, or Google Analytics) to find out more about your site’s visitors.
If you could have only one action on the website, what would it be?
Measuring Success
After you have defined your goals, make sure you monitor your website and track the successes it creates. Visionary Services Inc utilizes several tools to help us measure our goals – analytics software (Urchin and Google Analytics), client responses, and our own internal processes. Many goals can have a monetary value assigned to them to help you see the success of your site in dollars and cents.
For more information on setting website goals, please contact Visionary Services, Inc. VSi specializes in web site development and design with an emphasis on data-driven integrations. Located in Des Moines, Iowa, VSi provides web development, design, and consulting services on both Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems and a variety of platforms including PHP and Microsoft ASP .Net. Visit www.visionary.com for more details or to contact the Visionary Services Inc team.
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