What should my bounce rate be? How many leads should we be getting each week? How many more sales will my new website get?
People ask us these questions all the time and these are all good questions – but, unfortunately – they don’t always have cut and dry answers. You can always research this information for similar industries or types of businesses. But, even with that data, you can only strive to hit those numbers in time – not out the gate. For many businesses it takes time, testing, and strategy (may times, re-strategizing) to build an efficient, money-making website.
I know a thing or two about setting goals as I just completed running my first half marathon race. (Go me!) I remember researching how long it should take a women, my age, my size, etc. to run a half marathon. I got tons of feedback from blogs, forums, and from talking to other runners. But so many other factors came into play it was hard to say what exact time I should strive for. Factors like my running history, my personal endurance, the weather the day of the race, etc. Realizing this, I set a goal to finish the race – in no particular time – but to cross the finish line.
“Set a baseline.”
I hear myself telling people that all time – whether it is about driving traffic to your website, obtaining leads, running a 5k or even a half marathon. It would be ridiculous of me to think that I could run like a pro out the gate, even after 10 weeks of training. For your business goals, the best thing to do is to install Google Analytics, or an analytics software of your choice, to obtain data. Then track your web stats to understand what is normal for your site and business. You can use that data to make changes to your website to enhance its performance over time.
Having goals is important – it gives you something to work towards. But you must set your goals realistically and progressively improve over a period of time.
What’s your take on setting goals for your website’s performance?
Picture courtesy of Zwickerhill Photography