Does your ecommerce strategy have the right goals? (Guide to Small Business Ecommerce Strategy)

Over the next few days, I’m going to take a look at the fundamentals of developing an ecommerce and interactive marketing strategy for your business. And nothing is more fundamental to that strategy than having the right goals.

Are you getting everything you expect from your small business website? In fact, do you know what you should expect?

Some things to consider:

• Your goals need to tie back to a business result. One of the reasons I say brand awareness is not a goal is that rarely can a business manager tell me how they benefit from that awareness. For instance, I’m aware of McDonald’s, but I never eat there. Nor do I take my kids there. That’s wasted marketing spend. But, saying that you want customers who do eat in your restaurant – or shop in your store or stay in your hotel (you get the point) – to visit you once more per month (even if it’s a lower value transaction), could be a valuable goal. So focus on tying online goals to overall business goals.
• Align your goals as SMART goals. Web Worker Daily gave a solid overview of SMART last week that’s worth checking out.

So what goals do you have for your ecommerce strategy? What is worthwhile? Here are some examples:

• Increase quality traffic – traffic with a bounce rate of 20% or less – from three of your five main sources (direct navigation, paid search, natural search, email or referred) by 15% monthly.
• Improve task completion for your customers – whether a conversion action, email sign-up, lead form completion, or customer service issue resolution – by 10% in the next quarter.
• Grow revenue per site visitor by 30% annually through improved merchandising and ad sales.

Even if your site is used as an information site, you can target specific goals. For instance, I plan to grow subscribers to this blog by 75% in the next 6 months.

What goals do you have as part of your ecommerce strategy? And what goals am I missing? Tell us about them in the comments.

Oh. And if I’m going to make my goal, subscribe to thinks today. You don’t want to miss a thing, do you?