As we get ready to (almost) enter 2016, it’s a good time to reflect on the goals that you met and those that you didn’t this year. You likely laid out a strategy at the start of 2015, so look back on those goals—which didn’t you meet? I can tell you from experience that no matter how awesome your site did in 2015, there are definitely ways that you can make improvements in the year to come, and there are almost always things that didn’t quite make the mark.

8 Reasons You Missed the Mark on Your Website Goals This Year

Below are 8 reasons that you may not have met your website goal this past year and what you can do to improve and prepare for the next several months:

I found this term when reading here that explains why people leave websites in the first place. Essentially what it means is that it is a major turn off when people come across your site and your last blog post was from March 2015. Not only is your blog clearly suffering and your content development is severely out of date, but you also make a statement about how much you care about the people on your site. Make sure everything on your website is relevant, published within a reasonable date, and relatable to people who come across you page at a very specific period of time.

Did you closely monitor your website analytics this year? Monitoring is one thing, but did you make adjustments for improvement where you needed to? Analytics meaning nothing if you are not constantly adjusting and making changes to improve your site. In 2016 make sure to keep analytics on your close radar, and be flexible with your website so that you can make changes when need-be. It’s as simple as that.

  1. Prioritizing Site Ads over Content.

Many people make the mistake of prioritizing ads over their actual site content. This is a big mistake because it slows down your loading time and the overall experience users have on your site while also not providing the best user experience. Don’t make the mistake of considering the money you get from advertising worth compromising on other content on your site. That will turn people away faster than you can imagine.

  1. Lacking Clarity.

If you are scratching your head as to why your website didn’t make goals this year, consider that your site may not be clear enough when explain complicated topics or trying to explain your company and services in general. When people visit a website, they need to be able to tell in a matter of seconds what your company does and why they should stick around. The way to be clear is to use simple and concise verbiage and have the written/visual content be as clear as possible. Consider hiring a writer or a professional or even an SEO consultant to help you make sure that you’re putting out relevant content that makes sense.

  1. Site Structure.

It could be possible that your website is just not structured well. For example, the amount of times I have gone to a page to just learn more about the company and have not found an “about us” section is more times than I would like to admit. This goes hand in hand with the about comment about clarity. If your site is not clear, or if it does not offer the information that users are looking for, people are likely to turn away. Navigation can also fall under this category. Use breadcrumbs and internal linking to make sure your site is easy to navigate (more on this number 9 below).

  1. Boring OR Unprofessional.

If you have been suffering from high bounce rates, one possibility is that your site is just too boring, meaning your content isn’t engaging or relevant (for example, one big block of text is not nearly as appealing as an infographic). On the other end of the spectrum, your site could be unprofessional looking and full of typos and poor grammar. These kind of careless errors absolutely do not send the right signals to the visitor. These are not problems that many Webmasters seem to ever consider because they’re harder identify, so it’s important to make an effort to revise all content on a website and have a clear tone and voice set and discussed amongst team members.

  1. Navigation & Mobile Optimization.

Unfortunately, even in 2015 there are just too many websites that have poor navigation or are not optimized for mobile. You would think with all of the advice on these two factors that I would not even have to put it on this list, but the truth is that websites are still struggling to meet the mark on this. Your website should be intuitive, descriptive and straightforward. Flash-based sites tend to be among the very worst, and this has been an issue for some time. If you are one of these sites, please, step it up! Check out this article to learn more about the ins and outs of mobile optimization.

  1. Slow load times.

Don’t make your website visitors wait. One of the reasons that website visitors are not likely to stay, shop on your site, read your blog, or watch your video content is if they have a difficult time loading your page. If you have slow load times on your website, you definitely want to fix this before the New Year. Try using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to diagnose what you need to fix and how you can get there.

The Importance of Setting Website Goals for 2016

So, you may have messed up certain things in 2015, but 2016 is a new beginning and a change to rebrand your website and step up your game. You may be asking: why do website goals matter? Ultimately, website goals help to inform the decisions which influence how your website is designed and built, and as we discussed in this article, that has a lot to do with how your website performs.

To begin setting some goals for 2016, start thinking about some of the following questions:

  1. What content do you want to be the priority on your home page, and each individual page of your site design?
  2. Is your current structure the best way possible to organize your site?
  3. What is the visitor experience like? Is it the best it can possibly be?
  4. What improvements would we like to see from 2015? Do we know what it takes to make those improvements?

It is clear that by analyzing how you did in 2015, and areas you could have done better in, you can make for a more productive 2016. Start with these questions and addressing some of the problems I covered in this post. If you find you are not improving some of these features by the end of the year, you may want to considering getting some expert help come January.

Did you find this article helpful in addressing some of your 2015 pitfalls? Is there anything you’d like to add to the list? Let us know in the comments section below.