Does Your Website Help Your Business?

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

This is part of a presentation I gave in 2019 at WordCamp Atlanta. If you’d like to watch the entire presentation, you can watch it on WordPress TV: Get the Most Out of Your Website: Measure Everything.

Is Your Website Selling Products?

Let me suggest that some of your websites are selling things to accomplish your business objectives.

You’ve got a product, people, you want them to buy it. It will better their life if they have it, and so, they want it.

Is Your Website Aiming for Sales Leads?

I think that a lot of 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. 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. It it’s a shop, you’re paying rent, you need people to come in 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 that’s selling rock crushing machines, and it’s not really selling it, you’re sending the lead to a salesperson who then follows up. They’re selling products and seeking leads at the same time.

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

Which of These Is Most Important?

We have to make a distinction between macro and micro when it comes to how a website could accomplish a business objective.

1. Macro means, what is the thing your website will 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, right?

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, 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, then they pay me.

You shouldn’t confuse the macro and the micro, and I think that’s where some go wrong sometimes. Our websites want to accomplish everything. There’s a lot a website needs to do productively. Let’s make a distinction between the macro goals (meaning the thing that’s 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.

It is awesome to have a bunch of Instagram followers, but unless you’re named Kardashian, the number of Instagram followers doesn’t get you money. That is a micro goal that 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 begin 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.