Meeting Your Audience in the Middle: Website Goals Made Simple

This is the first article in the Website ClickStart: Simplifying the Steps to Creating Your First Website series. At the end of this series, you will finally have a clear picture of what you need to create your business’ first website.

Congratulations on taking this step towards creating your first website! I’m so glad that you made this decision. Now, onward!

Why does your website exist?

It’s important for you to define why your website exists. All other decisions concerning the website will need to support this website goal.

Here are common website goals, divided into 3 categories:

1. Have an online presence. You simply want a space on the web so that prospects or customers can find you if they look. Goals in this category would include:

• Appear in the search engine results for relevant keywords
• Get visitors to view your products and services
• Get visitors to contact you

2. Attract an audience. Here, your website is mainly informational and the goals would include:

• Build reader loyalty and return visitors
• Grow your website subscribers
• Get visitors to share your articles

3. Lead generation and/or sales. These goals would apply to a customer acquisition or e-commerce website:

• Establish trust with visitors
• Collect visitors’ personal and contact information
• Get visitors to complete the checkout process

These goals build on top of each other like layers. So your website may start off as a straightforward online presence but may grow to attract an audience and generate sales for you in the future.

But now that we’ve defined our website goals, we face a problem: Besides you, no one cares about your website.

Why do people visit my website?

It’s also super important for you to understand why people visit your website. Let’s take the example of a financial advisor. His website goal is to get visitors to contact him and ultimately hire him to develop an investment plan. However, the majority of his website visitors aren’t likely to hire him immediately. Their goals may be one of the following:

Check or compare pricing. The visitor views the product and services page, but they are not intending to buy. They’re simply comparing to other providers.

Research info for future purchase. Here, the visitor is intending to buy.. but just not right now.

Learn something. The visitor Google-d a problem and your website came up. Hopefully he finds the answer and not just ads or a sales pitch.

Find contact details. The visitor wants to ask a question or request a quotation. Are your contact details super-easy to find?

What I’m trying to get at is that your website goals may be on opposite ends with your website visitors. And remember, they couldn’t care less about what you want them to do. The most important thing to them is themselves!

Meet your visitors in the middle

Now that you have identified your goals and realizing that your website visitors may have (sometimes very) different goals, you’re in a position to make your first website more sticky to visitors and more likely to achieve the goals you want.

The ‘secret’ is to meet your visitors in the middle–help them to achieve their goals and then lead them towards your goal. When you meet your website visitors halfway from their goals to your goals, you will create a more effective website.

Going back to the example of the financial advisor, the path that his website visitor may take may look something like this:

1. Homepage
2. Financial advice and tips
3. Services
4. Pricing
5. Request a proposal

The financial advisor’s goal is to get visitors to contact him for a proposal, but the steps leading to that aim to serve the visitors’ needs first.

In this wireframe of the financial advisor’s website, the highlighted content answer some immediate questions that users may have and proactively address their concerns. The request proposal button on the left can remain in that position on every page, so visitors are always directed towards the website goal.

When you meet your website visitors halfway, you’re taking the initiative to let them know about you and your business and build trust. Just like how a customer-oriented business sets itself up for success, your visitor-friendly website will be more effective in achieving your website goals.

That’s it for this article. You’ve concluded the first step to creating your first website. In the meantime, be sure to complete the Next Actions for this step.

Next Actions

1. Answer “Why does your website exist?” and identify your website goal
2. Step into your customers’ shoes and answer “Why do people visit my website?” to identify your visitors’ goals
3. Plan out a path between your website visitors’ goals to your goals. There should be only 3-5 steps in this path.

Got a question? Ask your question in the comments section.

Click here to read the rest of the Website ClickStart: Simplifying the Steps to Creating Your First Website series.

Photo credit: slack12 on Flickr