NOTE: This the fourth segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website.If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. In step 1, we covered the research and discovery phase (See Step 1: Do your homework). Step 2 involved focusing and prioritizing your website development tasks (See Step 2: Identifying your focus).Step 3 involves identifying your goals for your website (See Step 3: Identifying your goals). Step 4 involves identifying your barriers.

IDENTIFY YOUR BARRIERS

Once you’ve identified your specific goals, identify HOW you will reach those goals. It’s not enough to build a new website and declare that you will increase website traffic by 30% within 90 days. How exactly do you plan to do that? You can start by identifying your current barriers to meeting your goals (ex: not enough website traffic). Once you’ve identified your existing barriers, you can begin to identifying the resources (products, people, services) that you will utilize to help you overcome those barriers.

Goal: Increase my website traffic by 30% within the first 90 days of this implementation.
Barrier: The website currently receives 2 hits per day
Strategy:

1. Use Google Ad-words to increase my paid/sponsored search engine visibility.
2. Hire a consultant to ensure that my web pages are optimized for organic search engine visibility (this could take some time)
3. Ask existing customers and relevant partners to link to my website and/or provide referrals.
4. Place links to my website on brochures, business cards, email signature line etc.

You will notice that in order to complete this step, you will need to have a baseline for measuring your progress. For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic, you should already know your website traffic statistics. If you are not monitoring and are unaware of your website statistics, then you should go back to step 1 and refocus your project. In this example, we would recommend that one of your high priority items is to implement a process for tracking your website statistics. This will require that you revisit your stated goals as well. In the example used above, the goal indicated is to “increase website traffic by 30% within 90 days”. That goal is no longer realistic given the new high priority item of implementing a website statistics monitoring process. You will first need some time to determine your existing traffic rates before moving forward. You may learn that you actually get more traffic than you think, but perhaps your bounce rates are high (this is the % of visitors that arrive on your site and leave without clicking on any other pages). This discovery could change the entire direction of your original plan.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Subscribers will receive a FREE eBook containing extended versions of Steps 1 – 9, as well as accompanying worksheets for managing your project. If you would like to receive the FREE ebook, join/fan the Websmith Group Facebook Page or subscribe to our eNewsletter.