Does Your Website Help Your Business?

To get the most out of your website, you need to measure everything. Before measuring everything, you need to determine your business objective. Step two is to ask, “How is your site going to accomplish these objectives?”

Is Your Website Selling Products?

Some websites sell things to accomplish your business objectives. You’ve got a product, and you want people to buy it. It will better their lives if they have it, and so they want it.

Is Your Website Aiming for Sales Leads?

Many business owners forget that websites can do much more than just sell a product. For instance, I don’t really sell a product. I want my website to give me leads. My business objective involves giving my clients reliable internet marketing advice and services, and I need clients to do that. I get clients when I get leads.

Does Your Website Promote Your Brick-and-Mortar Shop?

Some have a brick-and-mortar business. If it’s a shop, you’re paying rent, you need people to come through your door. That’s what your website needs to accomplish.

Does Your Website Sell Ads?

In others, maybe you’re selling ads on your site, maybe you are the affiliate marketing revenue that you get from your site. Your business objective is really all about publishing content to get more of a kickback, right?

Does Your Website Do More than One of These?

I have clients who sell machinery, industrial machinery, but some of that industrial machinery is, you know, five-figure machines, and no one’s gonna give their credit card to buy a $50,000 rock crusher. So really, it’s a website selling rock crushing machines, and it’s not selling it; you’re sending the lead to a salesperson who follows up. They’re selling products and seeking leads at the same time.

Some want to get people in the door, but maybe they sell a little online, too. Sometimes, you combine these.

Which of These Is Most Important?

When it comes to how a website could accomplish a business objective, we have to distinguish between macro and micro.

1. Macro: What will your website do that will get you closest to the money?
2. Micro: Is something that gets someone closer to the thing that finally gets you money.

In my case, I want leads, but I have an email list. I don’t make money from my email list. I don’t sell my emails, and I don’t put affiliate links in my emails. Well, sometimes I do. But that’s not my primary source of income. The micro lead is getting someone to sign up for my email campaign. The goal of that is to get someone to fulfill the macro lead, which is that the sales lead: “Hey, David, I need your help, I’m going to pay you money.” That is where I make the money. I make the money when I get the lead, sell the client, and then they pay me.

You shouldn’t confuse the macro and the micro; I think that’s where some sometimes go wrong. Our websites want to accomplish everything. There’s a lot a website needs to do productively. Let’s distinguish between the macro goals (the thing closest to when we get paid as the website owner or the business that owns the website) and the micro goals (which get us closer to the thing that gets us the macro goal).

So, let’s put this in context with social media, as an example.

Having a bunch of Instagram followers is fantastic, but unless you’re named Kardashian, the number of Instagram followers doesn’t get you money. That micro goal gets you closer to your main, macro goal. They’re following you on Instagram, they see your post, they interact with you, they begin to trust you, they start to rely on your expertise, and then when they need your help, they call you. There you go. They’ve called you. They’ve become a lead. That’s the macro goal. So, when we’re looking at all the data that we can look at, we have to ask, “What is the most important thing closest to where you get paid?” That’s the macro goal. Everything else is a step towards that in a micro goal.