Story Based Question
Let’s imagine you’re the owner of a custom furniture business. You’ve just launched your website and are eager to start growing your online sales, but there’s one big challenge: defining what success looks like for your website. You ask yourself: “What are the most important actions I want my visitors to take on my site? How do I define my website’s primary conversion goals?”
Exact Answer
To define your website’s primary conversion goals, focus on the actions that directly align with your business objectives, such as making a purchase, filling out a quote request form, or signing up for a newsletter.
Explanation
When setting primary conversion goals, you need to focus on what drives your business forward. This involves considering what actions will bring the most value to your website and company. Here’s how you can go about defining those goals:
- Identify Your Business Objective
Your conversion goals should reflect what you want to achieve with your website. For an e-commerce site, the ultimate goal is usually a purchase, but other business models may focus on lead generation, subscriptions, or building an audience. For example, if you’re running a custom furniture business, your primary goal may be getting people to request a quote or schedule a consultation. - Align Goals with User Actions
Think about what actions you want your visitors to take that will lead them toward achieving your business objectives. For an e-commerce store, this could mean adding items to the cart or completing the checkout process. For service-based businesses, it might include submitting a contact form or booking an appointment. - Consider the Customer Journey
Conversion goals should reflect the stages of the customer journey. For example:- At the awareness stage, your goal might be to get users to sign up for a newsletter or download a brochure.
- At the consideration stage, you might want users to add products to their cart or schedule a consultation.
- At the decision stage, your goal is likely for visitors to make a purchase or sign a contract.
- Measure What Matters
Choose goals that are measurable and can be tracked with your analytics tools, such as Google Analytics. It’s important to track both macro conversions (like purchases) and micro conversions (like form submissions or content downloads) to understand where visitors are in their journey. - Refine Your Goals Over Time
As your website grows and you gain more insights into your audience’s behavior, you may need to adjust your conversion goals. What works at first might not be as effective later, so it’s important to keep testing and iterating.
Example
Let’s go back to your custom furniture business:
- Business Objective:
Your main goal is to increase sales of custom-made furniture. However, since buying a piece of custom furniture is a significant investment, it often requires more consideration and interaction with the brand. - Primary Conversion Goals:
- Request a Quote: Since each piece of furniture is custom, the most important conversion for your business could be having potential customers fill out a quote request form.
- Schedule a Consultation: You may also want visitors to schedule a free consultation to discuss their needs, which can lead to more sales.
- Download Design Portfolio: As part of the process, visitors might want to see examples of past projects. Encouraging them to download a portfolio of custom designs could be another valuable micro-conversion.
By focusing on these goals, you ensure that your website is designed to drive the key actions that bring value to your business. Tracking these conversions helps you understand your customers’ behavior and optimize the user experience to ultimately increase sales.
To define your website’s primary conversion goals, align them with your business objectives and focus on measurable actions that lead users toward your desired outcome. Whether it’s a purchase, form submission, or another goal, defining clear conversions will help you track and optimize your website’s performance.