What does it mean to have a successful website? In the past, having a website that worked and looked good may have been all a company was really looking for. But in 2015 a website can and should do much more. A company needs to set standards for what their website strategy will do and how it will affect their business.
The success of a website depends on your measurement for that success. This means you need to set some goals. These goals should be Smart, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound. You need to set some SMART Goals.
Of course, you can set some more specific goals for things like organic traffic, social media reach, or average visit duration, but the three main metrics you want to look at when setting SMART Goals are traffic, leads and sales.
Start by looking at your current position. What’s your website’s current traffic? How many inbound leads are you getting right now? How many sales are you closing from inbound leads?
HubSpot has a great tool where you can set your SMART goals right on your dashboard. When you input your numbers, it compares your goals to the median and top 25% of HubSpot users.
Here are a few more helpful statistics you may want to take a look at to help you in this process. Of course these stats were gathered from a wide range of businesses and industries, so be sure to take that into account.
• SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate. (Search Engine Journal)
• Content marketing generates 3 times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but costs 62% less. (Demand Metric)
• Only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales. (Gleanster Research)
If you haven’t been collecting data up until this point, you’ll need to make sure your goals make sense when compared to how you currently bring in business. Once you have a few months of analytics, you can make some changes to your goals.
Your SMART Goals can and will change over time, but it’s important to always have them and to keep improving. Successful inbound marketing takes a lot of work, and it does take time. Having and hitting your SMART goals will help keep you motivated.