How I Use Website Strategy To Grow My Business

Small business websites are at a crossroads right now. AI has changed organic search, content creation, and online business for good. That’s why I am starting to look at my business through new eyes. Rather than focusing on my skills, I am leveraging my experience and strategic mind.

You may have already noticed the pivot to website strategy in my content. It’s something I am spending more and more time on developing. Soon, I plan to launch a new website strategy service. Until then, I spend my time experimenting with different ideas and methods.

How does this new focus affect my website? Ideation, experimentation, and testing all happen on my website. Before strategising for clients, I must clarify my process by using my own website as the guinea pig. This article explaining what I am doing now is a good idea for a few reasons.

First, it helps me think through and solidify my ideas in writing. It may also inspire others to think more about their website strategy. It might also ignite some interest in my website strategy service before it launches.

With all that said, let’s dive in and look at my own website strategy. A good strategy is always built around goals, so that’s where we’ll start.

What are my business goals?

Being strategic with a small business website requires knowing the business’s goals.

In the 18 months since I left the UK, I have maintained working relationships with most of my UK clients. After moving to Australia, I decided not to accept any new UK clients. Instead, I focused on finding clients here. This transition caused a significant reduction in my short term revenues. Having found new clients in Australia, my income has started to return to normal levels. Following the reduction in my UK client list, my goal is to replace UK income with Australian revenue.

For the purposes of this article, I’ll set my revenue target at $120,000 AUD. I won’t share my actual target because the calculations are easier this way.

To reiterate, my business goal for this year is to earn $120,000 AUD in revenue from Australian clients.

Breaking my goals down into smaller steps

It’s all well and good to say I want $120,000 this year. Saying it means nothing without a plan to achieve it. To make that plan, I need to break it down into key milestones that guide the way. So, let’s do that.

Earning $120,000 in a year means averaging $10,000 per month. I can achieve that with ten $1,000 projects, five $2,000 projects, two $5,000 projects, or one $10,000 project every month. I have to balance those projects with developing my business and winning new clients. That means I am better off focusing on shorter projects with higher prices. For the purposes of this article, let’s say the $5,000 projects are the optimal ones.

To achieve my business goals, the best course of action is to sell two $5,000 projects every month. That provides the income I need and allows me the time to develop my business, grow my brand, and find new work.

How can my website help me achieve my business goals?

I don't currently have the client network to find two $5,000 projects every month without new clients. As I grow my client base, there is more opportunity for upselling and finding new ways to serve people. Right now, my Australian client network is not big enough to do that.

With that in mind, my focus is on optimising my website for lead generation and conversion. To generate leads from a website, it needs traffic. Once the website has enough visitors, it’s time to focus on conversion. So, my goal is to increase traffic and optimise my website for people to book sales calls and start projects.

Now I know what I need to focus on; it’s time to choose my weapons.

For website traffic, there are two options: paid and organic. Paid traffic comes from ads. Organic traffic comes from search engines and social media.

I spent last year working on SEO and increasing my organic search traffic. SEO takes more time than ads to bear fruit, but is more profitable in the long run. Since I have already worked hard to increase my website traffic, the steps I need to take this year are not quite so big.

My preference is to double down on increasing organic traffic. Doubling down on SEO means I don't lose time learning about running ads.

As I get more people visiting my website, I should optimise it to guide them to my service landing pages. Landing pages are digital salesmen. The goal of my landing pages is to book sales calls. That means the pages must provide answers to any questions people have. Using CRO techniques, I can improve my landing pages over time. Each iteration optimises them for booking more calls with new clients.

How do I know if my website strategy is working?

There is more to knowing if my website strategy is working than achieving the ultimate goal. If I reach $120,000 in annual revenue, that doesn't mean my strategy works. To know that my strategy is working, I need to check my performance against each of my focuses.

SEO tools track my website traffic. This helps me analyse how well my efforts to increase website visitors perform. For my landing pages, I can count how many people are booking calls. These metrics help me calculate the proportion of website visitors that become customers. Only by analysing the whole pipeline can I know for certain how well my strategy is working.