There are a lot of things we can do to refresh a website to meet your business goals for 2018. The first step is to review your goals and check to see that your website still supports them.
What to Think About When Reviewing Your Website Goals
Here are the some key questions to help you review your goals:
- Did you meet your 2017 goals?
- If not, what were the main obstacles to meeting your goals?
- How does your website fit within your overall marketing strategy of reaching your audience? Is it still aligned with that strategy?
- Take another look at your mission and vision. Do the goals you set still fit your business?
- Are your goals still clear?
Here are some goals and objectives for example:
Goal: Generate leads for potential business
Objectives: Clear and effective calls to action, well-organized content, search engine optimization
Goal: Sell products or services
Objectives: Increase conversion rate, improve e-commerce functionality, active social media program
Goal: Increase membership
Objectives: Clear call to action, well-organized content, active social media program
Goal: To provide a centralized location for information about your organization
Objectives: well-organized content, up-to-date content, complete information
Goal: To improve customer service
Objectives: online chat, contact information featured prominently, system in place for responding to inquiries quickly
Whatever your goals are, make sure that they are specific and measurable. For instance, if your goal is to generate leads, be specific as to how many (eg, 20 leads per month).
Consider any changes to your company or marketplace. Chances are that changes over the past year within your company and in the marketplace are currently affecting your business goals. How have these changes affected your website goals and strategies?
Here are a few things you can do to help you determine answers to the questions above:
- Conduct a Survey: Stakeholders and customers can reveal issues you need to address.
- Conduct a Brand Audit: Conduct a brand audit to ensure the design of your site, pages, and other content adheres to your style guide and branding guidelines and are still working to enhance your brand.
- Compare Websites: Take a look at your competition and other websites in your marketplace. Does your site measure up?
- Review Your Content: Is your content supporting your content strategy? Is everything still accurate?
- Review Your Analytics: Do your web analytics reveal anything that you want to change? What changes do you need to make?
If you are not meeting your goals, you may need to take another look at the strategies you have in place. But if you are confident that your strategies are accurate, perhaps you need to revisit how they are implemented.
Here are some things to consider:
- Are there systems you need to put in place to ensure that you are keeping up with the strategies you have in place? A system for getting blog articles posted? A system to help you follow up on inquiries or comments?
- Are there design or structural changes to your website that would help you meet your strategies?
- Do you need to implement any new features or sections?
- Do you need to put more effort into your search engine optimization? Homepage optimization? Landing page optimization?
- Rework your ordering process? E-commerce management?
- Improve the customer support/interaction process?
- Integrate your social media process?
- Review or implement a media strategy? mobile strategy?
There are many strategies and tactics you can put in place to help meet your business goals. Review your goals as often as you can, but at least yearly to see if the strategies you have in place align with those goals.
I’d love to help you get the most from your website investment and ultimately achieve your goals. Contact me today and let’s get started.