Website Goals and Objectives to Support Your Marketing Strategy

Are you planning on developing a new website for your business? Or rebuilding and improving your existing one? If this is correct, you are in the right place. 

A new and improved website is an awesome way to present your business in the digital world. But can it be more than just an online business card?

Importance of having a website

A lot of times small business owners think that they need a website just because it’s a trend and almost every business has one. But they forget that the website is there for a reason, to serve a purpose. It can be to provide visitors with information, capture visitors’ details, sell a product or service, make reservations, interact with the visitors or provide them with support.

So the website is not an isolated project. Instead, it is a part of a broader marketing and business strategy. When incorporated into the business plan, the website can be a great tool to help carry out the strategy and support business operations.

It’s best if you take a look at your business and marketing goals and see where the website fits in. How can the website help you reach your goals.

There are two main questions you need to ask yourself:

• What do I want to achieve with the website?
• What do my customers want?

This means that the website should serve as your right hand and drive your business forward. And on the other hand, it needs to connect with your customers in a way that would motivate them to take a certain action.

To answer the first question we will go through the purpose, goals, and objectives of the website in this article. And to answer the second question we need to understand our customers, how they think, how to connect with them. This is usually done through research, analysis, defining the ideal customer, and testing. You can read more about how to better understand your customers here.

Website purpose - how can you support your marketing goals?

The purpose of the website should be in line with your marketing goals. Thus, the website design and content should be prepared in accordance. This means that once the visitor lands on your website the action you want them to take needs to be clear. 

Here are a few examples of the most common website purposes:

• Provide the visitor with information about your company and services
• Encourage the visitor to sign up to your newsletter
• Encourage the visitor to download a document (e.g. brochure)
• Invite the visitor to place an order, make a reservation or make an inquiry
• Provide the visitor with customer support

You need to structure your website according to its purpose so that you lead the visitor to the end action. This can be done by strategically placing certain elements across the website, such as the CTA section.

The copy, photographs, videos, and other website content should also correspond to the purpose of the website. So for example, if we want the visitor to buy our product, we need to present it to him in a way that they will identify with. We need to tell a story through our website content to encourage them to place an order. Below is an example of how Asana (a SaaS provider) presents its services. The value proposition is presented immediately in the heading. You can tell right away how this product can help your team. Then there is a short description further explaining the value followed by a CTA button to try the product for free. On the right side, there is also an image of the product. To sum up, there’s an on-point heading, clear value, alluring CTA which altogether equals a job well done.

Website goals and objectives

Once we have defined the purpose of the website we can continue and take a look at the goals and objectives. Needless to say, they are directly connected to the website purpose and usually fall under one or more of the above-mentioned purpose categories.

First, let’s define goals and objectives and understand the difference between them. Goals are usually long-term and represent a broad outcome. In order to achieve them, we break them down into smaller actions that are measurable and usually short-term. These are objectives.

As mentioned before, the website should support your business and marketing goals. So the purpose, as well as the goals and objectives, should be derived from and in compliance with them.

That being said let’s take a look at common marketing goals and translate them into website goals. 

Website goal #1

Building brand awareness is for example a marketing goal. The corresponding website goal can be to increase website traffic. If we want to further dissect it into smaller actions we can try to create specific objectives that are measurable and are connected to a certain time frame, such as: 

• Reach organic traffic of 300 users per month by the end of the year
• Increase the average monthly traffic by 15% within 12 months

Then we can create even smaller tasks. We can focus for example on increasing the organic traffic coming from the search results by improving SEO:

• Conduct research and find 5-10 high-volume keywords by the end of the month
• Write an SEO optimized blog post by the end of the quarter
• Three keywords rank in position 3-5 by the end of the quarter

Website goal #2

Another marketing goal can be to generate more leads. A corresponding website goal could be to increase website form completion and newsletter signups. We can then set the following objectives:

• Reach a target number of new subscribers by the end of the quarter
• Increase the number of new form completions by 20% in two months

To do that you can break it down into smaller tasks, such as:

• Test two different CTAs for one month and measure results
• Test two different form locations for one month to find out which location is a better performer
• Try a popup form for a certain amount of time

Website goal #3

Our ultimate goal is to drive sales. On the website, this can be in the form of a sold product or booked reservation. The website goal can be to increase online revenue. The corresponding objectives could be:

• Reach a target number of web orders by the end of the quarter or
• Increase online revenue by 15% by the end of the quarter

To do that you can break it down into smaller tasks such as: 

• Increase the sales of a certain product by 15% in the next three months
• Increase the average order value by 20% in the next month

Conclusion

In the digital world, a new and improved website is an excellent way to present your company. If set up strategically, the website can help you achieve numerous business and marketing goals. 

It is important to understand your business specifics and find out where your website fits within. Decide what the purpose of your website is and set your goals and objectives. 

Creating and implementing a goal-driven plan will turn your website into a powerful tool for your business. Don’t miss out on the potential of the online world.