Is Your Website SMART?

We talk at length about the importance of a great user experience for your website visitors. A great experience results from well executed plan that meets both user and business targets. However, building a website that gives users a good experience is not THE goal…

Why?

A good user experience is not actionable or measurable. It is a non-specific goal that is a required element of achieving actual goals. Don’t just try to “create a great website with good user experience.” Create a SMART one.

What is a SMART goal?

SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based.  SMART goal examples for your website might be:

• Get more Web site traffic – increase by 40% in 6 months.
• Improve  online sales of selected product by 25% within 3 months.
• Boost product awareness of selected product to increase in-store sales 10% next month.
• Add 500 newsletter subscribers to the in the next 4 months.
• Connect with 40 people per week on Facebook.
• Gain 1,000 more Twitter followers in 2 months.
• Improve brand loyalty on social networks with incentives for fans to give feedback – target goal: 1 positive feedback message per day.

Set up SMART goals for your website.

Let’s use a T-Shirt product page a website as an example. The T-Shirt product page product page shows shoppers product details  and a button to add it to their cart. It also has images of the shirt, price and description. The SMART goal examples :

1. Encourage the user to complete the purchase the shirt to increase sales by 25% over the next 2 months.
2. Encourage the user to follow on Facebook or Twitter to increase brand loyalty  – goal: 1 message of positive feedback per day.

What is needed to satisfy these goals:

• Professional design that allows user to feel the site is trust worthy.
• Clear branding.
• A link to product information before sale.
• Good images that represent the product well.
• Product description and key benefits that satisfies all questions.
• Any product specifications that the consumer need.
• Product variations such as colour and size.
• Product Price
• Delivery date and cost.
• Customer service information and the return policy.
• Easy to find add to cart button.
• After purchase links to Like on Facebook or Twitter with incentive such as future discounts.

Specific

Make sure your goals are specific, i.e. ‘increase in overall sales by 10%’, rather than ‘increase sales’.

Measurable

There are many things that can be measured give insight to user behaviour – the users clicks to determine how what users are most interested in. We can measure how many pages they visit. We can measure how they got your website and what pages they exit from. We could measure the percentage of visitors who complete the purchase versus the number who stop just before the final step. We can easily see  how many extra likes or newsletter subscriptions are attained.

Actionable

With specific goals we can understand what content and functionality will achieve our goals.

Relevant

These goals examples above are relevant for a product page, but obviously not for a services page or home page.

Time-based

It is important to set time limits for SMART goals to work and be measured.

You are not alone if you find yourself bewildered by web stats or simply avoiding them altogether. Do you cringe when someone asks you for reporting about the annual return on your web marketing investment? If so, it’s time to conquer your fears and follow our easy guide to defining, tracking and reviewing your web marketing objectives. Whether your website is a large, small, basic or custom, you must have clearly defined SMART website goals. This will allow you to monitor and establish whether the website is performing as it should, and in return, providing you with your return on investment! If you would like with determining your goals, or setting up your SMART goals, contact WebExpress today for a FREE consultation.