Setting website goals you can measure

Set one main goal, two or three supporting ones, and a number for each. A goal says what should change, by how much, by when, and how you’ll know. “A more modern look” isn’t one. “Twice as many enquiries from parents in Brisbane within six months” is.

The words people use when they first contact us are things like “outdated”, “refresh”, “more enquiries” and “easy to update”. Only the last two are close to goals. Turning the rest into something you can measure is the first job of any rebuild.

How many goals should a website have?

One main goal, then two or three supporting ones. Our discovery questionnaire asks this early: what actions do you want visitors to take, and which is the most important?

There’s usually one answer that matters most. For a clinic it’s a phone call. For a shop it’s a sale. For a charity it’s a donation. That’s the main goal, and the site is built around it.

Supporting goals sit underneath. Recruiting staff, growing a mailing list, or cutting the time your team spends updating the site. Two or three is plenty. Ten goals means none of them steers anything.

Every page then gets one job of its own, pointing towards the main goal.

What does a SMART goal look like on a website?

SMART comes from a 1981 article by George T. Doran in Management Review. It’s a checklist for whether a goal is any use.

	What it means	On a website
Specific	One thing, clearly named	Enquiries from the contact form and phone calls from the site
Measurable	A number you can track	Counted as conversions in Google Analytics
Achievable	Realistic from where you start	From 10 a month, not from zero to 500
Relevant	Tied to the business	Enquiries are how this firm wins work
Time-bound	A date to check against	Six months after launch

Put together: “Double enquiries from the site, from 10 to 20 a month, within six months of launch, measured as form and call conversions in Google Analytics.”

The measuring part has to be set up before launch. If tracking starts after the new site goes live, there’s nothing to compare against.

Know, like, trust: a goal for each step

People rarely enquire on a first visit. They find you, decide they like what they see, and need a reason to trust you before they get in touch. Each step can have its own goal.

• Know. Can people find you? Track impressions and clicks in Google Search Console for the searches your buyers use.
• Like. Do they stay and read? Track return visits and the pages people reach after the home page.
• Trust. Do they see proof? Track visits to case studies and reviews, and whether those visitors go on to enquire.
• Act. Do they get in touch or buy? That’s the main goal.

If enquiries are low, this tells you where the drop happens. A site that people find but leave quickly has a different problem from a site nobody finds.

Three real goals, and what happened

A speech pathology practice with three clinics. Let’s Talk Let’s Eat wanted to rank locally in Brisbane and Mackay, turn worried parents into phone calls, and recruit staff. Before the rebuild, the practice put its organic traffic at around 8 visits a month. We gave each clinic and each service its own page and made click-to-call the main action. In July 2026, Search Console recorded 313 clicks from Google.

A formal-wear boutique. Gossip Gowns’ site drew well over a hundred thousand visitors a year but converted a fraction of one per cent, against the 2 to 3% most ecommerce benchmarks report (Blend Commerce, October 2026). The goal was revenue the analytics could prove. We rebuilt the store, then made the catalogue readable for Google Shopping. August 2026 was its best online revenue month on record.

A national charity. The Pinnacle Foundation needed a site that stayed up during appeal campaigns, let a small team publish without a developer, and led visitors to donate. We rebuilt it around that path, from first visit to donation.

Each goal named who the site was for and what they should do.

Goals that don’t work

• “Look more modern.” Fine as a design brief, but nothing to measure.
• “More traffic.” Traffic that doesn’t enquire or buy costs you hosting and nothing else.
• “Everything at once.” A site trying to sell, recruit, inform investors and run a members’ area on one home page does none of them well.
• No starting number. Without today’s figure, you can’t tell whether the new site helped.

Questions about website goals

When should goals be set?

Before design starts. Our discovery questionnaire asks for the site’s overall goal, the actions you want visitors to take, and what the site needs to do for the business in three to five years. Agencies can then price the same job, which makes quotes comparable (Singapore, Australia).

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