Back in the nineties, my colleagues and I used to compare the size of our log files. The bigger the web server traffic log files, the better. Popularity was everything. It was common for the smaller sites to develop log-file envy. After all, traffic back then was directly related to IPO-ability. The bigger the file, the bigger the IPO. Well that was the theory anyway. Of course, now we know traffic is useless unless it converts. Don’t we?

One of the most important elements of any website should be its goals. Why does your website exist? For a lot of businesses, it used to be “because everyone else has one”. The fear of being perceived as a business stuck in the 20th century was too much pressure for some businesses to bear, so they embarked on the website building process without really understanding why they should. In fact, fear was a great motivator that those of us selling websites in the mid-nineties used to great effect. Sorry about that. We used to come up with ideas to keep users coming back to the site, like industry calculators, games for the kids, product information sheets, etc. Goals for sites were never discussed. Let’s face it, who needed the pressure of not hitting targets?! The last thing anyone wanted in the new medium was accountability. That could come after listing. Mmmm.

There is nothing wrong with having increased traffic to your website as a goal, but why do you want more traffic? That means more bandwidth costs, more expensive hosting, more maintenance, etc.

Goals for your site should be focused on one of two things. Does this increase business or save us money? Sound familiar? Numbers like your conversion rate and cost of customer acquisition are fundamental to understanding the value of your online presence. It’s easy to get more traffic. Just advertise you are giving away cash. That always gets them through the door. It’s the quality of the traffic that is important, not the quantity. A site with low traffic and high conversions is much more profitable than a high traffic site with a low conversion rate.

You decide. It maybe a phone call, an email sent, a form filled out or a sale through the site. By setting goals focussed around these fundamental actions, you free yourself of irrelevant questions such as, “Should I have a blog?” “Maybe we need forums?” “Do we need to podcast, because I hate the sound of my own voice?” What does the site need to achieve its goals? Once you have established that, the business will then look to technology for a solution, rather than the technology imposing itself on the business.

Let’s assume one of your goals is to increase lead generation. First of all you need to establish how many new leads per week your business can handle. I have seen more than one business come to a grinding halt as the volume of leads surpassed its ability to service them. What would five new leads per week do to your business? Ten, 20 or maybe 30? If you do not have the internal systems in place to handle the volume, you will quickly annoy a lot of potential clients.

I like to focus on lead generation for a particular product or service. This allows me to target specific niche key phrases in Google, which, in turn, will deliver highly qualified traffic that should convert well. It will also eliminate attending to unqualified enquiries. If you are an Alice Springs real estate agent the last thing you want to rank in Google for is “real estate” and the second last thing is “Alice Springs”. What you really want to rank for is “Alice Springs Real Estate” or even better “Alice Springs 4 BR home, BV. LUG with a view of the River Todd”. These phrases are far more qualified and will convert.

Unless you are selling advertising space, forget about “hits”, “page views” and even “unique users”. What you should be focused on is conversion rates. The more qualified the traffic is, the higher your conversion rate will be.