How to Determine Objectives for Your Business Website

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Putting up a website for your small business without having clear objectives for that website is like wearing a blindfold while trying to throw darts. The odds are, you’re going to miss your mark and not be as successful as you could have been. With websites, a little bit of planning and mapping out the purpose of each page can go a long way. The simple, 2-step process explained below can help your business map out a solid foundation for your small business website.

Scope out the overall objective first.

What is the purpose of your website? If you’re selling a product, getting people to buy that product would be an overall objective. If you’re offering a service, getting people to hire you for that service would be an overall objective. If you’re a non-profit organization, a good overall objective would probably be to bring awareness to your organization and to have people donate. 

While you go through this exercise, you may find that you have more than one objective. I’ve found that very few company websites have just a single one, but you will want to put them in order of primary, secondary, and so on. There should always be a top objective and it’s often very closely associated with your bottom line (if you’re selling something, getting people to buy it is the top objective).

NOTE:  When creating the content for your website, be sure to keep these overall objectives in mind. You can refine some of that content into calls to action when you start working on the user level objectives.

Next, create user level objectives.

User level objectives delve more into the “how”. For instance, if an overall objective is to get someone to donate to your non-profit organization, the how would be to add a donate button on the website. They’re also closely tied with calls to action. So step one would be to figure out the how and step two would be to figure out the why. Why would they want to donate? You need a quick, concise, and persuasive call to action to get them to click on the button. 

NOTE: Download the worksheet (Word document) we created that lists some common user level objectives to get you started.

website-objectives

Want to learn more about strategy and website goals? Read, “How to Determine Goals for an Effective Website Project”.

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