Setting Objectives

You should identify what you want your website to achieve and clearly identify your expectations and objectives. These can also guide you in making later decisions about the site e.g. if increased sales is an objective and you sell a niche product then advertising on a generalised website will be of little benefit.

Website objectives can typically be:

1. Increase sales
2. Improve product or Company branding
3. Reduce time spent with customers asking similar questions
4. Reduce recruitment costs
5. Improve customer relationship management
6. Reduce administration such as invoicing and telephone answering
7. Collect information to better understand your business and customers
8. Reach new markets
9. Reduce costs by seeking new suppliers

The business owner should set and review the objectives frequently because they know current and future business requirements. The list is usually specific to each organisation and can be from one objective to many. As your business changes, so will your objectives, this is one of the main reasons why you should permanently monitor the site.
If you know what your objectives are then you have something to measure against for your success or failure. If you do not know what your objectives are, you cannot measure its success or failure so why pay money for something you don’t know is working or not?