Setting goals for your website: 3 examples to supercharge site performance

Clarifying goals is a crucial first step in the web design process, whether developing a new website or redesigning an existing one, because it lays the foundation for creating a strategy to achieve desired outcomes such as increasing subscribers, sharing information, or selling products. Working with clients to identify their objectives ensures that the final product meets their expectations, and transforming broad goals into SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound—helps refine these objectives into actionable steps. For example, while improving a site's user experience is a broad goal, a specific SMART goal could focus on reducing user error rates in form submissions, making it measurable by targeting a reduction from 1% to 0.5%, achievable based on past experience, relevant to the broader UX goal, and time-bound with a three-month deadline. This structured approach to goal-setting helps ensure that the website redesign aligns with client needs and provides clear metrics for success.