How to Set and Monitor Website Goals

To often businesses build a website with no real goals and objectives thought out for the site. Good goals and objectives add to the value of your business, are based on reality, and can be measured. The measuring part is the part that is most often overlooked, yet how can you know if your site is adding value to your business if you have no means of measuring its productivity and you have no one monitoring it. Here are some possible objectives for a well designed website:



• Generate names and contact information of potential clients or patients.
• Provide information for existing clients or patients.
• Disseminate timely information about your business and or industry while establishing you as an expert in your field.
• Distribute our Newsletter over the Internet thus eliminate the cost of printing and postage.
• Generate referrals by providing our Newsletter readers a means of forwarding it to a friend.


A website that doesn’t have specific objectives that are measurable suggests that the site was not well planed during its development process. This often happens when the parties involved in the development process do not have a full understanding of Internet Marketing.

Once you have a clear understand of how your website fits into your overall business plan you will need to incorporate these objectives into your site. It normally doesn’t mean a full rework of the site. Much of what needs to be added is software off the shelf that can be incorporated into your existing site.

With the objectives in place it’s important that you have a means of measuring the level of success that each objective is having. This is where you will turn to your website analytics. Your analytics watches over your website and tells you how many visitors your site had over a specified period of time, how they arrived at your site, and what they did while they were at your site.

As an example your site had 200 visitors last week; here’s some of the data your analytics will give you.


• 56% arrived from search, 20% direct (typed in your URL) and 24% by referral (from a link that you established with another website).
• The average time spent on your site was 2 minutes 43 seconds
• Your bounce rate was 33% (came and went didn’t spend any time)
• 20% of your visitors were return visitors and 80% were first time visitors.
• 23 visitors followed the link to your latest Newsletter, 3 became new registrants
• 15 visitors looked at the informational brochure you're offering, 6 visitors signed up to have it sent to them
• 12 visitors looked at the information on your upcoming seminar, 5 signed up to attend.

This is just a sampling of some of the information that is available; so what does this tell you.


• Your site is well Search Engine Optimized, your getting decent search traffic; you have a good link base that is feeding you traffic; you need to work on getting your website top of mind with your existing clients or patients. You need to build a mailing list.
• You need to beef-up your current content to get your onsite time higher.
• 33% of your visitors didn’t find what they were looking for; you need to dig deeper, did they come from Search, Direct, or Referral. The answerer will tell you what you need to change.
• You need to give your Newsletter, Brochure and Seminar better billing

A well structured website with specific measurable objectives that is properly monitored and maintained can be the most valuable marketing tool that you posses, but the truth is most small and medium businesses spend a lot of money building a pretty website get it up and running then basically forget about it because it doesn’t bring client through the door or make the phone ring. If this sounds like you, go to www.wealthenhancement.com; it’s a site with clear measurable objective, they offer you five opportunities to make connection with them on the landing page. Their website objective is “to generate new business”. Type Financial Advisor Minneapolis in your Google Search Bar, and see if you can find them. This is not by accident.

If you need help turning your website into a marketing tool we should talk.

Kerry Grinkmeyer
The Best of the US
kj@BestofUS.com
205 956 4329