If you’re running your own business or have several “hats” in your workplace, chances are you will find setting realistic goals and objectives fairly intuitive. The main issue people tend to struggle with is making sure to review your goals at the right time, don’t rush making new objectives for future projects and most importantly don’t take ‘higher traffic’ or ‘better search rankings’ as success, what these give you as an end result is your success factor. Now, you may have a good idea of where you want your website to go in the near future and what you want it to do for your business. Keep in mind that a simple goal is a good thing, something like “Sell more XYZ to ABC by the end of the year” will be much easier to communicate to staff than a very specific goal that may need to be altered during its course. Simple goals are a lot easier to come back to whenever you make any website decisions.

Below are some examples of typical goals and objectives. Remember, the goal is the end outcome of your objectives not the other way around. Don’t have “Get the highest search ranking” as a goal if the main reason why you’re doing this is to achieve something else – site activity, leads, subscriptions, then sales. You can use the simple table below to fill in the blanks to give some grounds to achieving these later on.

The first example is already done and relates to Mr. X who has good conversion rates and low exit rates but has noticed a small decline in his page views.

Goal	Objective	How	Outcome and Rating	Notes and changes
Eg. Increase sales from people who have purchased before	- Increase returning site visitors by 15% over the next 2 months - Increase newsletter subscriptions from previous purchasers and leads	- Show benefits of subscribing on site - EDM: Email people who haven’t bought in over 3 months - Social Media: - link to site when new products are available	- 10% increase in returning visitors - Several more subscriptions 7/10, good outcome for time spent but would like more consistency from previous purchasers	- Need more current Social Media users engaging with our updates - On site benefits of subscribing looks good but hard to find
Eg. Reduce service cancellations and abandoned carts	- Reduce exit rates on key pages by 10% by the end of next month - Reduce abandoned carts and cancelled appointments by 20%	- Usability / Aesthetics: make browsing options more natural and remove any unnecessary elements. - EDM: Maybe we can email or alert people who don’t finish their checkout?	-	-

In this table, it is important not to put too many options in the ‘How’ section, as it will then be more difficult to trace what when wrong (or what went right) later on. When running tests, it is always important to keep things simple. Changing just one element is the best way to measure whether a change has had a positive or negative effect.

To Do For My Business

        I have a Primary Goal that is the purpose of my website’s existence

        I have Primary Actions that I want my visitors to make

        I have Secondary Goals that may lead to Primary Goals and Objectives being fulfilled (eg: registration, subscription, download, phone call)

        My objectives have a timeframe and will be straightforward to measure in the future, they relate directly to my primary and secondary goals

In Practice

Depending on whether you are selling a "billable hour" or a product the sale amount maybe anything from $20 for a product to $300 for a billable hour. Either way you can still get a strong value indication from online goal achievement...

Let’s say you receive 100 phone calls from potential customers a month:

-          On average, around 10 of those calls result in a conversion (i.e. Booking, appointment, treatment or sale)

-          On average, each conversion that originated from a call receives a dollar value of $50

-          Now we know that each incoming phone call has an average value of $5 (10x$50/100)

Now you know the value that each click on the ‘contact us’ part of your website brings, and can incorporate it into your goals! So don’t forget, to really support your ‘goal outcome’ always ask how a caller or visitor found out about you.

There is a move today within corporations to improve employee productivity and to solidify buy-in at the same time.  One way to accomplish this in the long term is to improve employees’ wellbeing.  Plans today might include providing ergonomically correct workstations, gym memberships, in-house massage therapy sessions, topical learning lunches, access to counsellors or life coaches, and nutrition consultations, to name a few.

A great way to ensure your company is paying attention to employee well-being is to talk to your staff about their greatest challenges.  You may be able to identify certain areas of wellbeing that would benefit most from more targeted attention.  Nurses working with seniors or in palliative care, for instance, may benefit more from having counselling or life coaching sessions than they might benefit from being given an ergonomically correct chair in their nursing station.  If your employee demographic is youthful, gym memberships and intramural sports team activities may be more attractive than massage sessions. 

Another way of improving your employee wellbeing is to invite outside specialists in to give talks.  You might invite in personal trainers, psychologists, yogis, or other professionals for after-hours or lunch break sessions.  Some may charge a fee, while others will do it for business promotion.

Monitor the attendance at each session to evaluate topic success.  Offer follow-up opportunities to those who attend by offering next-step information.  This might include providing employees with the business cards of the speakers, or pamphlets that will assist them in investigating the external services on their own.  Another next step might be to offer your employees personalised plans.  Resources can be provided in the way of books, checklists, or links to valuable websites as well.  

Focus on keeping the momentum going if you want your employee wellbeing program to have credibility.  Talk about and advertise events and services in other business meetings.  Hang informational posters where the employees will see them, send around group emails and welcome replies and input.  Give your employees adequate time to attend functions.  Have your senior management participate too.

Doing business from a holistic viewpoint is not only good for your employees; it should be good for your top line.  Your most valuable asset may be the knowledge and skills carried by those bodies that walk your company’s floors.  They need to be taken care of.  Do your employees a favour by helping them to stay healthy and live a balanced life.

‘Did you know?’ - Psych Press have a range of services that help you monitor and manage your talent retention strategies; including culture surveys, climate surveys, job satisfaction surveys, exit surveys and online outplacement services. Feel free to Contact us to talk about how Psych Press can help talent retention in your workplace.

An important notion that should stick throughout all of your web-learning and online efforts is that marketing online doesn’t depend on just aesthetics, usability or search engine optimization, customer management or traffic analysis. Rather it is a culmination of these which influence each other, so no element should be overlooked when trying to measure success, thinking up new ideas or making lasting changes.

For a straightforward reference point, below is a table of some common areas necessary to develop and maintain an effective site. You can use this as a ‘shopping list’ when considering site changes or wish to measure the success of just about anything of yours online. It is also handy to keep these in mind when figuring out how well your competitors do things. Don’t worry if you’re not 100% sure on what all of these mean as we will go over them soon!

Inside your website
Usability	How easily visitors can find and use what they’re looking for on your site. How straight forward the information is and whether the traffic is going where you directed it.
Aesthetics	Whether or not visual assets of your site fit together well and are attractive. Where the user’s eye is attracted to. How memorable your site is, how well it reflects your business and brand. Ties in with usability.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)	Effects the likelihood that people will be able to find your site (mostly through Google) when they are looking for your business / industry / products / services or anything else related to what you want to offer them.
Analytics	Tells you what has happened on your site. See statistics on who visited, what they saw, when and where they left and how they got to your site in the first place all according to a chosen timeframe. This way you can track the success of changes shortly after they are made and substantiate new ones.

Outside your website
Community Management	Helping users with questions, complaints or queries whilst representing your brand and voice. Building a strong and visible rapport.
Social Media	Extending the reach of any campaigns and creating discussion. Ties in directly with community management. Relatively quick and cost effective. Most popular examples are Facebook and Twitter.
Electronic Direct Marketing (EDM)	Direct Marketing efforts via email. This is predominantly used to communicate offers and new products /services but also includes newsletter updates about any changes, sharing or commenting on industry news and any automatic mail that helps people use your site and services.

To Do for my Business

        Taken note of the above areas that I have / haven’t considered or used before.

        Do a 20 minute search on my main competitors, how do they compare with their Social Media, Aesthetics and Usability?