Each and every day, millions of free websites are being built and coming alive on the Internet, whether they are being developed by hand or through the use of a free website builder. In this day and age, it is not enough to merely put together a website and expect to achieve your goals, be they monetary or otherwise. The right way how to make a website and expect to use it as a vehicle to achieve your desired objectives is to apply the principles of the SMART technique for goal-setting. SMART is actually an acronym that represents each of the components that comprise this goal-setting technique.
The reality is that the Internet has become an extremely competitive marketplace. When you perform a Google search, it is common to get millions of search results. There are millions of websites out there competing for your eyeballs. So if you want your website to outdo your competition, then it is extremely important that you come up with a clear objective that is attainable and realistic. And then you must come up with a plan that will help you achieve that goal.
The problem is that many websites fail to meet the webmasters’ goals because, quite frankly, the webmaster himself is not quite clear as to what the goals are or how to achieve them.
This is where the SMART goal setting technique comes in handy. By leveraging this approach, you will be able to deploy a website that has a much greater probability of achieving your goals. Or, if you have already developed a website, you can use the SMART technique to tweak your website and your associated marketing strategy to drive traffic to it and increase your sales conversions.
Let’s take a look at how SMART can be used to set goals for your website and help you to achieve those goals:
Specific - Your goal need to be extremely specific and concrete. In other words, you must be able to clearly be able to identify when this goal has been achieved. It should not be something vague. It should not be a “moving target” but a fixed one. For example: “Develop a 26-page website that describes one animal that begins with each letter of the alphabet” is a specific goal. But “develop a website about animals” is not a specific goal.
Measurable - Your goal must be something that is not only specific but which can be clearly measured with facts, data, and empirical evidence. It has to be something that, once you achieve it, the goal must be easy to prove to someone has been achieved. For example: “Develop 26 separate web pages on your website, each one containing at least 500 words, and being optimized for the name of an animal that starts with each letter of the alphabet” is an example of a measurable goal. “Develop a website about animals” is not.
Achievable - Your goal has to be achievable. In other words, you want to set your goal to be something that you know is within the realm of possibility to accomplish. This does not mean that you should not attempt to aim high. What it does mean is that you need to set a goal that can be achieved if you apply the maximum effort possible. For example: “Get 1,000 people to subscribe to my e-mail list in the next 90 days” is achievable. But “Get a million hits to my website this year” may be unrealistic.
Realistic - Aside from being achievable, your goal needs to be realistic. It needs to be something that makes sense, is within the realm of possibility, and is something that can be worked toward. If you set a goal that is not realistic, you will be setting yourself up for failure. For example: “To earn a full time income from my website” is realistic. “To become the richest man in the world with the income from my website” is not realistic.
Time-bound - Your goal must be something that can be measurably achieved in a specific period of time or achieved by a specific time and date. This forces the pursuit of the goal to be brought into laser-sharp focus, since the inability to reach your goal by the set time deadline constitutes a failure.
