So you have a website! Well done, but have you been struggling to get leads or make sales. The key reason is that you may not have set goals that you wish your website would achieve.

As with any project it is imperative to analyze its purpose, the same would apply to building a website. Today we are having a look at how to determine goals for your website and successfully convert leads into sales.

There are two categories you need to look at when defining your website goals:

• Immediate goals: What are the immediate (short term) goals of the project? E.g. Increasing sales for an upcoming holiday or the promotion of a new product.
• Long Term Goals: What are the long term goals of the project? E.g. Increasing annual sales or expanding brand recognition

When you have a website it is important to understand how internet users / clients will find information about your products. Today, search engines have become the supreme source of product information. Ask yourself the question – where do you stand in the search engines? The websites positioned at the top are going to be far more successful than the rest of the websites featured on the bottom of the page. It´s time to start thinking about getting your name up there and to be more visible for the client interested in your product or service.

The main goal of any website should be to provide its visitors with a pleasant and fulfilling experience. To have a user friendly website and visitors that have positive experiences on your website will be drawn to visit your website again, tell friends about your website, sign up for a newsletter, purchase a product, submit an inquiry about a service, etc.

To help achieve these goals you need to create focused landing pages. According to Wikipedia, in online marketing a landing page, sometimes known as a lead capture page, is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines.

A client generally does not have time to spend reading through a website’s home page looking for the product. Only ONE click and the client will reach the correct page.

In short, to be visible for a potential client and to convert leads into sales, set your goals and create landing pages.