I’m sure you’re already aware of this, but as of publishing this article we are currently about halfway through the year. I know, I know. I have a hard time believing it, too. I’ll give you a second to have that same mild freak out moment that I just had.
Now that we’re all on the same page about what month it is 😉 I have a question for you: how are you doing with your goals so far this year? Regardless of what your goals are, if you’re realizing right now that you’re not quite there on some of them, I’m here to help.
One thing business owners forget when they’re busy creating content, marketing themselves, and working with clients week after week is how our websites play an important role in supporting your business and helping you hit your goals.
Today I’m going to share some insight into how your WordPress theme can help you accomplish those things you set out to do this year. So if you’re looking back and realizing you’ve fallen behind a little bit, hopefully these tips will help you start to get back on track.
Establish what your goals are
I don’t know about you, but there were several years in a row where I’d get to this time of year and not even remember what things I’d wanted to accomplish. I got so busy working on day-to-day tasks or new ideas would come up that I’d end up off track, and not even realize it until I stopped to think about my original yearly goals.
If you’re feeling like this, right now is a great time to re-evaluate what you want to be working on for the rest of the year for your business. This is also important because to get your WordPress theme to help you hit your goals, you obviously have to know what they are.
How I like to tackle goal setting
Whether I’m setting goals for the month or the year, I like to approach goal setting by breaking things down into manageable supporting goals. Doing this helps you identify little things you can do to help hit your big goals, which obviously makes it easier to make progress on them.
Here’s an example of what this looks like… Say your big goal for the rest of the year is to grow your income so you can leave your 9-5 job. That’s a big goal for anyone, and it’s a little vague. If we took that goal and broke it down into supporting goals, those might be:
- Work on growing your email list
- Boost your social media engagement
- Network with fellow business owners
Now, those three supporting goals feel a lot more doable on a monthly basis and will make you feel good as you make progress toward your big goal.
How your WordPress theme can help with those goals
Once you have your goals for the rest of the year figured out, it’s time to start evaluating your current website design (or a new theme if you’ve been thinking about purchasing one). What you’re looking for is going to depend on your business and what your goals actually are, but there are some obvious ways to make sure that the WordPress theme on your site is supporting you.
Look at the available content areas
When you’re thinking about your goals (both big and small supporting goals), you want to make sure that there are different places around the site that you can put your content into to help you hit those goals. Most of the time this will be widget areas – so think about things like a Sidebar and Footer. Those are obvious, and most themes have both of them.
However, some WordPress themes take it a step further and give you additional places to add in things like calls-to-action or opt-in forms. For example, in the screenshot below you’ll see that in the Jade theme there’s a site-wide banner option built in. This means if you were to launch something new for your audience, you could add a call-to-action for people to click over and check it out.
It’s also important to see if you can change out the content that displays on the homepage. For example, a theme demo might display links to featured products from a shop, or portfolio items, but you may not need either of those. Instead, you want to make sure that you can input what will work for you there – like popular blog posts or links to your freebies.
Use page templates to your advantage
Something that’s becoming more standard with WordPress themes is more of a focus on page templates. Four years ago if you purchased a theme and you needed a sales page, you could easily create a page on your site but it would feature your header, footer, and maybe other content that distracted your audience from what you wanted them to do (make a purchase or opt-in).
However, most themes today come with at least one or two different page templates that will allow you to hit a variety of goals. For example, below you’ll see what the standard landing page template on the Olivia theme looks like. With that you could easily link to an opt-in incentive on social media, grow a waitlist for a new program you’re launching, or create a special page with your most important links that you can then link to on Instagram.
Simplify what’s on your website
Last but not least regardless of whether you’re trying to make your existing site work better for you or you’re looking for a new WordPress theme, the easiest way for it to support your goals better is to simplify what you have on your website.
This is really important for me to point out because I often see people trying to show off as much as possible on their website. Just because there’s a content area in a bunch of really cool places doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for you to use them.
Instead of packing a lot of content and links in around your site, think about the things you like and don’t like on the websites you’ve visited in the past. Keep those things in mind when you’re setting up your own website for your audience.
Your website is a key factor in growing your business, so the WordPress theme you use should support your goals and make it easier to accomplish them.
So before you sit down and create your plan of action for the rest of the year, I encourage you to look at your website to make sure it’s helping instead of hurting you along the way.
If you’ve been thinking about getting a new design, be sure to head over and take the quiz to help figure out if now’s the right time to get a new look for your website!
