What to expect: how growth is measured

Growth starts from where your site is today. Before any work begins, you'll get a baseline: your current traffic, broken down by location, topic, and engagement.

Not all traffic counts. If you run a food bank in Portland, Oregon, and two-thirds of your visitors come from out of state or out of the country, those visitors can't use your services. They don't count toward your baseline or your growth.

Success for any organization, and especially a nonprofit, depends on reaching the right people, on the right topic, in the right place. So you'll see growth measured two ways:

• Quantity: the number of visitors
• Quality: whether those visitors are in your service area, looking for what you offer, spending time on your site, engaging with it, and taking action (conversions)

Growth in both makes a much bigger difference than a larger total alone. A thousand new visitors from the wrong state won't use your food bank. A hundred new visitors from your county who sign up to volunteer will.

Your growth goals are set against this baseline, and you'll see progress on both at every review.

Ready to set your baseline?