A website without a clear goal is just a digital brochure.
If you don’t know what you want visitors to do, they won’t know either, and that usually means no conversions, no leads, and no results.Without a clearly set goal at the beginning it will feel like you are swimming against a very strong current and not moving anywhere.
Let’s help you avoid this, by defining your website goals early on. You don’t have to make a big thing out of it, but looking deep within yourself and understanding these goals truthfully will set you up for success.
Your website goal guides every decision you make, from layout and text to buttons and pages.
A clear website goal helps you:
- Focus your content towards achieving that goal
- Attract the right audience that will engage with your website the way you want to
- Measure success that matters to you
- Turn visitors into loyal customers
Define the Problem Your Website Solves
Most people who will visit your website are looking for a solution to their immediate problem. If you can clearly understand what their problem is, you make them feel heard and understood. Every successful website solves a problem.
This could be:
- Saving precious time
- Making a task easier to finish
- Providing clear information on a difficult to understand topic
- Solving the drawbacks of competitor solutions
For example, these are the problems webopstart is striving to solve for you:
- Too many offers/details from tools to create the website yourself, making it difficult to make the right choice for you
- Thinking you dont have the technical skills to build a website yourself
- There is way too much information out there to learn from, people dont know where to start what is good or bad
Now it’s your turn! Brainstorm the problems on a piece of paper and select the main ones you think capture the essence of your business’s existence. When you’re clear about the problem, your website goal becomes much easier to define.
Define Your Main Website Objective
Start with one simple question: What is the main thing you want your website to achieve?
Common website objectives include:
- Selling my products online
- Offering services to my niche industry
- Establish myself as a thought leader in a specific space
- Generating leads so that I can convert them online
- Educating my users benefits of using my product
- Building brand awareness
Now you try. Write out all the ideas that come to mind, try to focus on one main objective. A website that tries to do everything often ends up doing nothing well.
Identify Your Target Audience
Your website goals only make sense if you know who the website is for.
Ask yourself:
- Who is visiting my website?
- What are they looking for?
- What problem do they want to solve and when exactly?
For example, here is the target audience for us at webopstart:
- Small Business Owners who want to grow their online presence
- Freelancers who want to show case their skills and get new clients
- Bloggers who want to share their thoughts with the world
- People who want to create a website for their passion project
- Start-up founders who want to test their ideas with early customers
It would be great if you could build the personas of 2-3 people in your target audience. Go creative here, and give them actual names, try to describe their actual profiles, from age, gender, home situation, to hobbies, work activities, and other interests. Then define what are the main problems they experience and how often.
When is the moment they decide to look for a solution and why? This should give you an interesting perspective on shaping your website goal more towards actual profiles of visitors.
Translate Your Goal into a Clear Outcome
Now that you’ve collected all the necessary information, turn your objectives into a specific outcome for your website.
Instead of:
- “I want a website for my business”
Try:
- “I want Peter, 39-year-old father of two daugthers, and train operator, to book a 1-hour personal online consultation for his knee injury”
Now that you have a couple of these very well-defined outcomes, you can make much better decisions regarding your website setup, content, and overall user experience.
Write a Simple Goal Statement
Now it’s time to put your website goal into one clear sentence. Your goal statement acts as a reference point for every decision you make on your website. If you can explain your website goal in one simple sentence, your visitors will understand it faster too.
A good goal statement should:
- Clearly state the purpose of your website
- Focus on one main action
- Be easy to understand
Weak example:
“This website is about my business.”
Stronger goal statement examples:
- “The goal of this website is to sell handmade products directly to customers.”
- “The purpose of this website is to help small businesses book a free consultation for web design services.”
- “The goal of this website is to sell beauty products online.”
To give you a concrete example, let’s use the main goal of webopstart
“The goal of webopstart is to help 1,000,000 non-technical creators build their first website by using our step-by-step knowledge center and website tool comparators”
Keep it short, clear, and easy to understand. You can always refine it later.
Tip: follow this formula:
“This website helps [who] do [one main action].”
Examples:
- “This website helps freelancers find new clients.”
- “This website helps visitors compare hosting plans.”
- “This website helps customers buy products online.”
Use SMART Objectives
To make your goal actionable, turn it into a SMART objective.
A SMART objective is:
- Specific – Clear and focused
- Measurable – You can track it
- Achievable – Realistic for your business
- Relevant – Supports your overall goals
- Time-bound – Has a deadline
SMART objectives example:
“Increase contact form submissions by 20% within three months.”
SMART objectives help you measure success and improve over time.
Set Primary vs Secondary Goals
Your website can have more than one goal, but not all goals should have an equal in your decisions
- Primary goal: The main action you want users to take
- Secondary goals: Supporting actions (reading content, following on social media, downloading a guide)
Always design your website around the primary goal, and let secondary goals support it.
Defining your website goal is one of the most important steps in building a successful site. When your objectives are clear, everything else becomes easier.
You now have the tools to go out there and define the problems you are solving, the actions you want your visitors to take, and the (measured) goals you want to achieve.
This is an iterative process, so revisit this step occasionally to see if you need to make some changes to adapt to your changing business. If you’ve read this far, well done, you’re now ready to build a website with a clear direction and real results.