A tool is a device or implement used to carry out a particular function.
What kind of tool your website depends on you! What do you want your website to do for you?
Maybe your website’s function is to highlight the work you do and the importance of your mission. Or maybe the website’s main goal is to generate income through donations.
Whatever the goal is, it’s important to be clear about why it exists. This way you can turn to the next important question. Is my website working? I’m not talking about whether it loads when you go to the appropriate web address. What I’m talking about is, is my website meeting my business goals.
Let’s talk about translating business goals into digital goals.
Goal: Highlight your organization’s message
How might we track a goal like this? Perhaps we can track time spent on certain pages, subscriptions to your newsletter, visiting certain types of pages or sharing a page on social.
Goal: Generate income through donations
This goal is more tangible. We can keep track of whether a donation happens either by tracking a thank you page visit or a purchase event.
A *macro conversion* is what you traditionally think of when you hear the word “conversion.” The importance of tracking macro conversions is a no-brainer: after all, it is the ultimate goal of your website, whether that’s making a purchase or filling out a lead form. For non-profits that take donations on their website, it would be receiving a donation.
Apart from these goals, thinking about what actions a prospect might take to get them closer to converting. For example, I might visit an organization’s current campaigns and about us pages prior to feeling comfortable with donating. In this case, your website needs to build enough trust before the person donates.
These are micro-conversions. Actions that a prospect can take that brings them closer to the macro conversion on their digital customer journey. This means that most micro conversions are indicators of interest, such as subscribing to your newsletter, spending a certain amount of time on a lead page, or clicking on a product page.
But how do you know if your tool is working?
By setting up event or page tracking using a tool like Google Analytics and setting up goals will allow you to see how well your users are moving towards your intended goals.
