The five step process to set and achieve goals for your website

Have you ever wondered whether your website is producing the right results for your business? How do even measure something like that?

This simple five step process will help you setup and measure goals for your website – and it all starts with working backwards.

Step 1: How much do you want to grow your business this year

We recommend using on a monetary value based on sales revenue and a growth percentage. As an example, if your business generated $5 million in sales last year, and you want to grow it by 10% – you’d be setting a goal of $500,000 in increased sales this year. Write down this number as you’ll be using it in the next step.

Step 2: How much does each new client bring to your business

Now take a look at how much revenue each new client brings in. An average value across all your clients will work best. Let’s estimate that each client brings in $25,000 to your business.

Step 3: How many sales per month do you need

So far, based on the above figures, you want to bring in an additional $500k into your business, with each client bringing in $25k. This means you’ll need an additional 20 clients this year, which is approximately 2 clients per month from your website. The assumes that all your other sales processes don’t change – i.e. you want the additional 20 clients per year purely from your website.

Step 4: How many leads do you need

Let’s jump to your sales conversion ratios now. Based on your past history, how many leads does it take to create a single client? Let’s work on an average of a 33% conversion ratio. This means that you’ll need 6 leads per month to convert into the goal of the 2 clients per month.

Step 5: How many website visitors do you need

The final step is to look at the number of website visitors it takes to generate the 6 leads per month. Let’s say that on average it takes 10 website visitors to generate a single lead. This means that you’ll need 60 quality website visitors per month to generate the 6 leads per month.

The final website goal

Hopefully by now you’ve got some figures you want work towards. Based on the above example, your goal will be:

60 quality visitors per month, that creates 6 leads, which in turn results in 2 paying clients of approximately $25k in new business each.

Additional goals

Whilst the above process gives you something to work towards with your website, there side goals that you can create. Checkout this list for ideas:

• New leads for nurturing. As an example, you might have a goal of generating 100 new leads per month that you can send blog posts, tips and tricks and your monthly newsletter to. These might end up as clients in 6-12 months, when they’re ready to purchase your services.
• Sharing content. As an example, you might have a goal that every blog post is shared on social media to at least 1000 people, with over 100 likes and comments. This gives social signals to Google to help improve your search ranking.
• Back links. Back links from important websites will help give your website credibility – and therefore show up higher in search results. A goal of two back links might be a great starting point.

How to achieve your goals

Now that you’ve got a goal to generate 60 quality visitors per month, you can start to focus on how to bring those visitors to your website.

Before you kick off any of the following, you’ve got to conduct as much market research as possible. Take a look at our blog post – “The top five survey questions that get you better customers“.

Once you’ve done your research, you can kick off some inbound marketing strategies. Here’s a few ideas:

• Google Adwords. This is a great way to send highly targeted traffic to your website – especially if you capture those visitors at the right time, e.g. they’ve got a problem and they’re Googling for a solution.
• Social Media promotions. Social media can be great for ad-hoc promotions, e.g. an end of financial year special or a free offer that you’re wanting to get out there. If you’ve got a strong social media following, then this option can give you some quick wins.
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). This is a longer term strategy but it can have some great pay-offs. If your business ranks well for a search term, it can bring in loads of free website traffic.