Whether you have a website or you're just planning to create one, you have to be aware and plan it’s goals. Exactly! Your website needs goals so it doesn’t just exist in the world wide web but is also functional, has a purpose and gives great ROI if done right.

A lot of times it’s possible to see that businesses or individuals have created websites so they can say: “Yes, we have a website.”. I believe that’s wasted time, resources and opportunities.

This post talks about two categories of website goals you shouldn't ignore when creating your website.

Your personal or business goals

These goals are about what you want your website to do for you. Here you identify why you need a website and what it can and should achieve for you.

• Sell your product or service online
• Inform your visitors about your product or your location
• Share news or content about your business
• Provide something that gives your customers extra value
• Provide your contact information or allow visitors to get in touch with you straight from your website
• Allow visitors to sign up for your services or automate other business processes

It could be one or more from the above. However, you could also have some other specific website goals that are related only to your business. Identifying these should give you a great picture why you need your website and how to move forward when you create it.

Visitor/customer goals

The worst part is when you decide to build your website thinking only about yourself and what you want. This is where you run into a wall. Because customers & visitors also have goals when they visit your website. If you don’t identify their goals you’ll most likely never reach yours. Plain simple! If I’m your customer and have to scratch my head to find what I want or you make it hard for me to give you my money - I’ll most likely find someone who figured it out. 1:0 for your competition.

I believe you don’t want that, so get to know your customer. Know whether they want to buy from you, find your location, contact you, look up information about you or consume your content. When you’ve done that, make it “stupid” easy to find it or do it. This is the step where you turn your website into piece of magic.

What is the benefit, conclusion?

First of all you will be better off organising and designing your website. You’ll know what's important and what’s not. Then you will be able prioritise contenr to reach the maximum benefit. This will allow you to understand what has to be included, improved, adjusted and what should be left out for your website to be successful.

This will make your website goals so much easier to achieve and save your customers some definitely unnecessary headache trying to get what they want from you.

Successful websites are just like successful businesses - they work both ways. They achieve your and your curstomer goals. That is why we suggest you spend some extra time to identify them so you can create a great website that brings in results.

What are your thoughts on this? Does your website hit it's goals?