The new year is a great time to make sure that your website still aligns with your business goals. Ask yourself these two questions:
- Does your website still reflect you?
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Is it supporting your business goals as well as it can be?
Now is a great time to review your website analytics and see how people are getting to your site, how long they stay, what pages they look at (or don’t), and why they leave before taking action.
With that data, you can set tangible goals for how your website can help reach your 2017 business goals.
Step 1: Review 2016 Performance
It’s hard to set goals if you don’t have a frame of reference.
Key Metrics
Start your website review by logging into Google Analytics and assessing some of your website’s key metrics (if you don’t have Google Analytics or another analytics tool in place, get in touch with us):
- Pageviews
Total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are counted. - Pages Per Session
Pages/Session (Average Page Depth) is the average number of pages a person looks at when visiting your site. Repeat visitors and repeated views of a single page within one site visit are counted. - Exit Pages
The number of times visitors exited your site from a specified page or set of pages. - Average Time by Page
The average amount of time users spent viewing a specified page or screen, or set of pages or screens. - % New Sessions
An estimate of the percentage of first-time visits. - Conversions & Website Goals
If you’re not sure how to set up on-site conversions to track how people use your site, Back40 Design can help.
If you’re running digital marketing campaigns, you’d also want to review how those are performing.
Step 2: Set Goals for 2017
You’ve likely already laid out your business goals for 2017 – Where are your growth opportunities? How much do you expect to grow? How will you get there?
Now, it’s time to set goals for your website with your new business goals and last year’s website performance in mind.
Website Goal Examples
Here are some examples*:
| Business Goal | Website Goal | |
| Increase awareness among current customers and potential customers. | → | Increase pageviews. |
| Reach new potential customers that haven’t heard of us before. | → | Increase volume of new visitors. |
| Use our investment in our website as a business development tool. | → | Increase number of qualified leads. |
| Present our business in a clear, relevant way to our target audience. | → | Decrease bounce rate. |
| Improve our digital strategy to capture our audience online. | → | Increase referral traffic from social media. |
*These are some suggestions to illustrate how your business goals should align with website goals. Keep in mind that all business goals and website goals should be specific and measurable.
Once your goals are defined, determine how you’re going to measure success (refer to key metrics listed above).
Step 3: Make a Plan
Your data mining most likely uncovered some room for improvement on your site. And, your goals probably can’t be achieved without making efforts to change those stats.
For example, if your goal is to ‘increase pageviews by 10% in comparison to same time period last year’, what are the different tactics you can implement to drive traffic to your site?
Well, you’re in luck. There are a lot of options, including:
- Starting a digital marketing campaign (on social media or Google)
- Publishing more news articles/blogs and sharing that content across social media
In addition to driving traffic to your site, you should review the stats to see if your content is engaging and answering your visitors’ questions.
And, if it’s not, a few tactics to consider are:
- Adding design treatments to key pages on your site (especially helpful for a page with a lot of information)
- Adding or modifying calls to action (i.e. “Schedule a Free Demo” or “Purchase”)
- Changing the structure of your homepage or navigation
Step 4: Implement
Now that you’ve finished planning, it’s time to take action.
Our team can help you work toward your goals ─ whether you’re needing to know how to add a blog to your site, how to move around pages, or get the right visitors to your site.
Step 5: Continue Measuring Results
Keeping an eye on your site’s data can help you make adjustments year-round. Don’t wait until the end of 2017 to look into how your site is helping you reach your business goals!
We recommend checking site usage on a monthly basis to find opportunities and learn how the changes you’ve implemented are working.
Ready to get started? Let’s set up a meeting to review your site together.
