You may have made it your goal to have your own website and that's great but you're still going to have goals set for your site.As with the website's intended purpose, we have to get focused and have a clear and complete understanding of what we want this site to achieve.
With any general goal-setting we undertake, there must be some variables to set our goals on. Therefore, our goals must be:
- SPECIFIC: Describes what you want to accomplish with as much detail as possible.
- REALISTIC: Goals you know you are actually capable of obtaining.
- CHALLENGING: Takes energy and discipline to accomplish rewarding goals.
- PRIORITIZED: Sets goals by time and importance into clearly specified target completion dates.
- MEASURABLE: Describes your goals in terms that can clearly be evaluated.
Writing down your goals creates the roadmap to your success. Although just the act of writing them down can set the process in motion, it is also extremely important to review your goals frequently. Remember, the more focused you are on your goals; the more likely you are to accomplish them.
With respect to the development of your site, the principal question is:
What do you want this site to accomplish? (For you and your visitors)
Every website will have different objectives while every website owner will have set different goals for it. Any site will have varied reasons for existence. These could be:
- Product brand awareness
- To market detailed product information
- To target international communities
- Provide the latest new product or service information to customers
- Market yourself
- To make money from an online business
It's clear that a business orientated site will be more objective in its goals than a site of a personal nature but the site must have a reason for existing.
We also want a way of knowing if our website is performing its goal's as intended. It would be beneficial to the site's owner to get visitor feedback. A simple way is to simply ask or gauge from visitors through a feedback form or a survey.
We also suggested in determining website purpose previously, to dedicate a page in the form of a mission statement. If you decide to do this, you can list your site goals and objectives here also. That way, your visitors will clearly know what your site is trying to do for them!
SUMMARY of setting website goals:
- Be sure you know what you want your site to accomplish
- Write up the goals for your site
- Think of ways how you can measure the success of your site's goals
Now we have a clearer idea on why our site exists (website purpose) and what we want it to achieve (website goals), we need to now focus on the theme of our site.
If you have any questions or comments please call me on 0720390184 or e-mail me on webmaster@webcraft.ws.