Goals have created many worthy endeavours over the past, the Empire State Building was built with goals, as was the invention of the light bulb and even the treadmill. Just like all worthy endeavours, goals are essential in website design too.
Think about this: if your goal is to have a cool looking website with your favourite colours, a logo that spins around and a disco track that plays when visitors arrive, you can easily achieve all of this. But if that’s the MAIN goal, it’s likely your site will never make the money you desire it to make or recruit new clients.
Because your main goal was to make a site that looked cool, it won’t perform as well as it should. You need to realise that your real goal all along was to build an effective, money-making website.
It sounds quite simple really but, before you can start building your website, you have to know what you want your visitors to do once they arrive there. Do you want people to download your ebook, book a training class or contact you for more information? Answering this question helps you to focus and determine exactly which elements should go where.
Clear goals are a framework over which your entire site is built; they’ll help you determine if your content is compelling and if your website design works for you or against you.
Once you’ve established your primary goal, it becomes easy to let go of fun ideas that don’t perform well and make good choices about the types and frequency of content based on results.
Another important component of good goal setting is that it drives visitor behaviour too. When visitors arrive at your website they want to get right to the good stuff. There’s nothing worse than going to a website that isn’t clear about what it offers and what you should do.
You should organise your site around your primary goal and you’ll find that visitors stay longer and respond better to your call to action.
Who is Your Audience?
If you walk into a Sushi restaurant, you’re certainly not looking for a cheeseburger, right?
It’s important that your website is designed 100% around what your perfect customer wants to see. Time can be wasted by casting a wide net as you’re not truly optimised for anyone in particular. Plan your website – all of your marketing in fact- around your ideal customer and you’ll get much better results.
When you’ve got your perfect customer nailed down, you can begin to ask yourself questions about what kinds of content they like and expect.
Why Would Someone Land On This Page?
The days of tricking website users into landing on your website so you can sell links or get affiliate fees are a thing of the past.
When visitors arrive they’re looking for something specific and everything from the page title right down to the footer content has to deliver on that.
This question has three parts:
What are they looking for?
What are their intentions?
What are they expecting to find?
Answer these questions and then craft content to match. Always make it easy for someone to find the next step. Divide pages into logical sections and brain-sized chunks that are easily read and acted upon.
We believe crafting the main heading and a first paragraph that connects with your visitors is crucial to making people stay on your page.
It’s simple. If you serve the right content at the right time, people will stick around.
Again, the focus is on your primary goal, if you find that people are spending a lot of time on a certain page but aren’t closing the deal with a purchase, sign-up or a phone call, then you know it’s time to adjust the strategy.
What to do next?
Picture this if you will: a website that instantly engages with your target audience, connecting with them on every page and directing them to book a training session or download your book – whichever may be your goal. A website that is clean, contemporary and most of all, keeps your visitors on their for as long as possible.
At Startup Active, we have helped literally thousands of fitness businesses and personal trainers deliver their goals to the right audience through their website. Creating websites that generate the leads you desire for your business.
To see how we can use your goals for effective website design, simply book in for a consultation with one of our experts: Click Here
