Defining Your Website’s Goals
- Oct 17, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 21, 2025
How to Set Website Goals That Actually Help Your Business Grow
A step-by-step guide for small business owners and personal brands who want a website that works for them, and not one that just sits there.
In this series we will go step-by-step on how to create, prioritize, take action and measure your goals. I promise to make this as simple as possible.
Building a website without clear goals is like trying to drive to a new city without a map. You might get there eventually, but you'll probably take a few wrong turns along the way.
In this series we’ll cover:
What Do You Want Your Website to Do? (Defining Your Website’s Goals)
Turning Website Goals Into Action (What Goes on Your Website?)
How to Measure If Your Website Goals Are Working (Without Getting Lost in Data)
Many business owners don’t know where to start with their website. The first step is to define your website’s goals. It’s very tempting to just dive right in and start to build out your business website, but by skipping this crucial step, you are leaving money and visibility on the table.
So before you start designing or writing content, take a few minutes to decide what you want your website to do for you. This will make everything easier, choosing the right layout, writing content, and even getting visitors to take action. If you haven’t already defined your overall goals, you will want to do that first. Check out the business marketing goals guideline, and refer to those goals as you move through this series.
Let’s get to it.
Part 1: What Do You Want Your Website to Do?
Taking a few minutes to define your website goals now will make the whole process of building your site so much easier. It’s like creating a roadmap, you’ll know exactly what to focus on for your design, content, and how your site should work for your visitors.
Plus, it takes the guesswork out of the process. If you don’t know where to start or how to fix your current website, defining your goals will take the headache out of the process.
Trust me, spend a little time here and save yourself from a lot of stress down the line.
Let’s start creating your website's roadmap.
Step 1: What’s Your Website’s Job?
Your website should be working for you, just like an employee. So what do you want it to do for you and your company?
First, let’s select its role or roles. Take a look at these potential website goals and select the best one(s) for your website:
Get more people to know about you (Brand awareness)
Sell your product or service (Sales)
Get people to sign up for something (Lead generation)
Book appointments or visits (Physical business support)
Increase social media follows or shares (Engagement)
Share helpful information (Content delivery and website traffic)
Become a trusted and go-to source for your field (Credibility)
These are some core website goals, your specific goals could include others, but most companies and brands will include at least one of these mentioned above.
Quick Action: Take 2-3 minutes and write down your website's top priorities. This can be in a list or write them out in a sentence. Examples: “I want my website to help me sell more pet accessories”, “I want to increase my web series subscription rate,” “My website will be the top resource for small businesses to excel at their marketing efforts.”
Use the list above if you need a place to start. Or match back your top priorities to the goal categories in order to help you clearly identify each priority. Keep these priorities handy as we move into the next step.
Step 2: What Does Success Look Like?
Awesome, now that we have an idea of what we want your website to achieve it’s time to define what success looks like. In this step we are going to take your quick priorities above and get more specific.
Take your goals from above and make them measurable.
What this means: Define what success looks like by creating an achievable goal.
Why Having a Measurable Goal is So Important
When your goal is measurable, it means you can actually see if it’s working, and that’s a game-changer. Without a clear, trackable goal, you’re basically guessing.
For your website (or any marketing effort), a measurable goal gives you:
Clarity: You know exactly what you are trying to achieve
Focus: Helps you stay on track instead of feeling like you need to achieve everything
Proof: It’s about knowing what’s working, what’s not, and when it’s time to make changes so you can actually reach your goals.
Your Next Step
Let’s get specific with your priorities. Take each priority that you wrote from above and make them measurable. Use the examples below as a guide.
Priority: I want my website to help me sell more pet accessories
Measurable Goal: Make at least 20 sales per month through my website.
Priority: Grow my email list
Measurable Goal: Get 50 new people to sign up for email in a month.
Priority: Have more people learn about my brand
Measurable Goal: Have 1000 people visit my website in a month
Priority: Get people to read more of my blog posts
Measurable Goal: Increase pageviews per person visiting my website by 30%
Amazing, now you have clear and measurable goals that we can use to shape your website into achieving what you need it to achieve for your business or personal brand.
Next in this series
We are going to continue shaping your goals into a roadmap for your website. No matter if you are building a new website or updating an existing one, this series will take you through simple exercises that will have a major impact in reaching your desired results.
By the end of this series you will have:
Goals instead of guesswork - Goals that clearly outline what success means for your business
A roadmap of what items your website needs to include in order to achieve these goals
A way to not only measure your goals, but how to know what to fix if you are not meeting them
Peace of mind that your website is on track to deliver the best results to meet your business needs
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