How To Build A Website That Achieves - By: Warren Newson

In the offline world it's the few percent of people that write down their goals and regularly review them that are the big achievers in life. So why not use the power of goal setting to power your website way past your competition? If you don't know what you want your website to do, it's likely to end up as an unfocused underachiever. It may look pretty and impress your friends, but it won't do anything for the bottom line.

One of the most fundamental questions to ask about your website is what do you want from it?

Is your goal to increase turnover by 10 percent in the next year, or do you want to increase inquiries by 20% in the next 6 months? If it's a work from home website do you want to make $500/month or $1000/month within 12 months?

To get the most out of your goals they need to be achievable with a little bit of a stretch, they need to be written down, and they need a time frame. Having a written goal will force you to look at how you're going to achieve it.

What sort of site are you going to build, about how many pages will it be and what will you write about? How will you get interested visitors to your site? What do you want your visitors to do? Buy online, contact you via email or phone, sign up for your newsletter or e-course, or something else?

The offline achievers regularly review their goals, and check progress against their plan, and you need to do the same with your website. You'll need to check your website statistics, and see if you're going according to plan.

If you don't get many visitors you'll need to work out why not. Is your site optimized properly for the search engines? Have you got enough quality backlinks? Are you targeting the right keywords? If there are problems here, you can fix them.

On the other hand, maybe you've got plenty of visitors but no-one is buying and you need to look a different set of issues. Maybe it's your call to action. Do you actually have one and is it as good as it could be? Is your phone number or contact form easy to see? Are you building a relationship with visitors via your newsletter or e-course? Is there a good reason for visitors to sign up to your newsletter or e-course? Do you come over as a friendly trustworthy expert, or as a pushy used car salesman?

Or are your expectations unrealistic or you need to give things a bit more time?

The great thing about goals and plans is that you get the chance to change what you're doing so that you can achieve them. If you get off course it's no big deal. Just get back on course again. Another good thing is that you can change your goals if you want to. If you've achieved your goal, make it more ambitious and start work on achieving that. If you are nowhere near your goals maybe they were too much of a stretch and you need to cut them back a bit.

If you want to achieve your goals, you need to know the basics of internet marketing. It isn't rocket science. Find the right keywords to use. Write content, build pages and optimize them for the search engines. Presell. Get backlinks. Build more pages and optimize them.

Even if you don't build your site yourself you cannot assume your webmaster will build the site right. Some webmasters can make a pretty website but don't know how to build it to get traffic. If you have some knowledge of internet marketing you'll be able to judge whether or not your website has some chance of doing what you want.

Or, you'll need to go to a webmaster with a track record of successful sites, or build your own website with a system that has a track record of successful websites.

So to build a website that works set your goals and write down what you want to achieve and when you want to achieve it. Plan how you will achieve it and build your website to suit your plan. Check your statistics to see if you are achieving your goals, and take action if you aren't. And learn the basics of internet marketing so what you know what actions to take.

A website can be a fantastic tool so make the most of it.

About the Author

You can achieve your small business website goals more readily with the right tools and a system that works. The Site Build It program (SBI) is one way to go, but is it a Site Build It scam? as some say, or can it really help you achieve your goals? Warren Newson, editor of http://www.building-a-web-site.com looks at the issues.

Article Directory Source: http://www.articlerich.com/profile/Warren-Newson/32016

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