Have you ever considered having KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) for your website? At some point, you will need to know how your website is performing and this can only be done if you have measurable goals set for it. So how can this be done? Well, we use the SMART goal philosophy because it is one of the easiest ways of measuring how you are doing in any given undertaking which is broken down below;

Specific

Simply put, these are clear goals. Examples would be increasing the sales conversion rate by 25%, getting 50 unique visitors to the website per day or improving client satisfaction rates by 15%.

Measurable

This means you can tabulate your progress as S.M.A.R.T goals are quantitative rather than qualitative. You will have to determine a concrete criteria and methods for measuring progress toward each objective. One of the most popular methods is tracking conversion rates via Google Analytics. Remember, measuring is key! If you can’t make any sort of measurements, then you won’t be able to tell how your website is performing.

Attainable

Ask yourself if your objectives are realistic and attainable. Setting these too high or low makes the whole process of setting your KPI’s futile. One of the best ways of approaching this is to compare the goals that you have set to the current numbers that you have. Look at the performance of your current website to determine if the new goal is realistic. Once you have made the comparisons, it will be easy to know how realistic your goals are and also help you in making the necessary adjustments if the goals were set to low or too high.

Realistic

Simply put, these are goals that are realistic and attainable. This means that these are goals that you can actually see happening. Take the caution of not setting vanity goals. Always see to it that there is a distinction from what you want your website to accomplish to the business objectives of your company. Involving different departmental heads in a company setup for example would be good if you have any doubts about setting these distinctions.

Timely 

This is the due date or time-frame that has been set for the goals to be accomplished and should be attainable and realistic by factoring in effects such as driving more traffic to the website or continued website optimization, which might not be immediate.

Here are five (5) goals that you can set for your website;

1. Unique Visitor Goals

This is a goal that you set to increase your daily unique visitors and can be done by creating quality content that promotes engagement with visitors. It is good to have a lot of traffic on your website but it is has to be the right kind of traffic. Getting unique visitors to your website is a numbers game. The greater the number of visitors the greater the opportunity you have to share your content and find potential clients and customers. Imagine having a daily number of 50 unique visitors a day and out of those, a minimum of 5 subscribing to your newsletter. What this means is that if you have 500 unique visitors per day, you will have an addition of 50 subscribers to your newsletter list per day the kind of growth that you want to see for your website.

A good point to remember is that getting these numbers doesn’t end with great content. You still have to find a way of sharing your content so that it reaches to a lot of people. What this entails is you formulating a plan to share your content in those places where it will be a service and add value like on social media platforms, classified ad websites, etc.

2. Bounce Rate Goals

Reduction in the bounce rate of your website is one area that needs a lot of attention. This is always a great concern to anyone who has a website. Imagine having to spend a lot of time creating content only for someone to look at your content for less that 3 seconds. It is something that is very disappointing and this is why it is very important to find ways of keeping people on your website. Reducing the bounce rate is all about providing your visitors an environment to engage with you and your website. The advantages of reducing your bounce rate is that visitors stay longer on your web pages and potentially have a greater opportunity to engage with you. The opposite is true and could mean your content is not very compelling and in most cases, you are not just giving your visitors reasons enough to stay on your website.

Make sure your website is responsive, loads fast and has engaging content like opt-in forms or surveys where you can create poll questions. This kind of engagement helps to keep visitors.

3. Search Ranking Goals

Having a plan of how you will progress in your search rankings is vital for every website owner. Search results are not the only way of people finding your website but they play a huge role when it comes online marketing. In terms of search results, the key has always been to know what keywords to use. Know how competitive the keywords you are using are by knowing what your competition is using. Share and promote your content to rank better on search engine results.

4. Backlink Goals

Creating a systematic way of building backlinks to your website can prove to be something that is priceless as it will help you in so many different ways. One helpful thing is that your search engine rankings will improve as it helps get your content exposed to a lot of traffic. Think of quality backlinks as merit citations for your content. Yes, backlinks are not easy to build but they are worth the effort because of the value they offer and also how search engines view them. A very good example of a website that has benefited from backlinks is Wikipedia (the link we have just used in here is a backlink to Wiki) and this is the reason why it appears at the top of almost any search result. This is all happening because the links pointing back to the Wikipedia website from all over the internet have given it immense authority.

Make it a part of your daily, weekly or monthly routine to build one or two back links on high-quality websites. You could start with posting blog articles as a guest, building relationships and asking for backlinks with different organizations. The easier option is to submit your website to relevant online directories.

5. Subscriber Goals

Increasing your subscriber list is considered to be one of the most important things you can do to create brand or product awareness. There a lot of websites that do not have subscriber lists and because of this, they are missing out on a lot of opportunities to engage with existing and potential clients. If your website does not have this list, create one and even when you have the list make it easy to opt-in to your list. A great way of making people subscribe to your newsletter is to offer discount coupons or specials periodically. This tactic has been used over the years and it works like a charm.