Website goals. You better have them if you want to drive the growth of your site forward. In fact, you better not just have goals. You need to have the right goals.
Why? Because your goals are the foundation around which the rest of the site will be built. If you don't have them, you'll end up with a site without focus. Worse, you'll leave your users dazed and confused. Obviously, this would be a disaster.
In this post, I'm going to walk you through my process for selecting and prioritizing the right goals. When you're done reading, you'll know how to select goals that will turn your site into a key driver of business growth.
Before I dive in, I want to make one thing clear: prioritized goals are only half of the equation for an effective website. The other half is a focus on user needs. Why? Because your goals are irrelevant if they are entirely disconnected from what your ideal customer wants or needs.
I like to think about site goals and user needs as a Venn Diagram. Your ideal customer has a lot of needs that your business will never be able to fulfill. In addition, your business may have goals that are irrelevant to you customer. We're searching for the area of overlap at the middle of the diagram where your goals align exactly with what a user needs. This is where your site can be successful.
Unfortunately, there isn't enough space in this post to discuss both user needs and site goals. If you don't think you have a solid grasp of who your ideal customer is and what they need and want, check out this free buyer persona creation lesson from Hubspot Academy.
Seems like a simple question, right? Wrong. Goals often end up being nebulous. Without specificity it's impossible to understand if you're hitting them. I recommend using the S.M.A.R.T. goals framework when selecting goals. That means that every goal you choose for your site must be:
There are hundreds of goals you could choose for your site. All but a few of them would be wrong. Here's my three step process to choosing the right goals:
Chances are you'll come out of your meeting with the leadership team and some other discovery sessions with different departments or stakeholders at your company, with a list of 10-15 goals. This is where prioritization comes in.
In my experience building dozens of sites, no site with 10 equally weighted goals will succeed. You must choose one top priority, a few secondary ones, and then maybe 3-4 tertiary ones. Nothing more. Without this type of focus, your users won't understand what you want them to do. Users only spend about 8 seconds deciding whether to stay on your site. You can't afford any confusion.
Here's two other reasons why it's essential that you prioritize your goals:
Prioritization is difficult, but not impossible. The time you spend here will save you hours of pain and suffering on the back end. And your metrics will look better as well. Here's the process I like to lead clients through:
Armed with a prioritized set of goals, you can now start identifying which features and functionality will be important on your site. It's time to be ruthless again:
This is hard work, but the end result is worth it. Your site will become a growth engine for your business. And you'll have your goals to thank for it.