Evaluating Web Site Performance
By James Williams
Setting up a
website is the very first step of an
Internet marketing campaign, and the
success or failure of your site
depends greatly on how specifically
you have defined your website goals.
If you don't know what you want your
site to
accomplish, it will most likely fail
to accomplish anything. Without
goals to guide you in developing and
monitoring your website, all your
site will be is an online
announcement that you are in
business.
If you expect your site to stimulate
some form of action, whether it is
visitors filling out a form so a
representative can contact them, or
purchasing a product,
there are steps you can take to
insure that your website is
functioning at peak efficiency. One
of the first indicators of how well
your site is working for you is
finding out the number of visitors
in a given period of time. A good
baseline measurement is a month in
which you haven't been doing any
unusual offline promotional
activities.
However, just because hoards of
people have passed through your
gates does not mean your site is
successful. Usually, you want those
visitors to actually do something
there. It is equally important to
monitor the number of visitors to
your site who made a purchase. This
figure is called the site conversion
rate, and it is an essential element
of the efficacy of your website.
To find the site conversion rate,
take the number of visitors per
month and figure out the percentage
of them that actually performed the
action your site is set up for.
For example, if you had 2,000 hits
to your site, but only 25 of them
purchased your product, your site
conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get
this figure, take your number of
visitors and divide that figure by
the number of visitors who made a
purchase. Then divide that result by
100 (25 ?00 X 100).
If your website is set-up to get
visitors to fill out a form, make
sure to then figure out what the
difference is between your site
conversion rate and your sales
conversion rate. This is because not
everyone who fills out your form
will actually become your customer.
However, whether your site is set-up
to sell a service or product, or to
get the visitor to fill out a form,
the site conversion rate will
measure the success or failure of
your website whenever you make
changes to the site.
You may find that you need to
implement some additional marketing
strategies if you find that traffic
to your site is extremely low. There
are several effective methods to
improve the flow of traffic to your
website, particularly launching a
search engine optimization campaign.
This campaign is targeted at
increasing your position in search
engine results so that consumers can
find your pages faster and easier.
You can either
research the steps you need to take
to improve your search engine
rankings, or employ a search engine
optimization company to do the work
for you.
In either case, after your have
improved your search engine
positions, make sure you keep on top
of them by regular monitoring and
adjusting of your efforts to
maintain high positions.
Another factor to examine is how
easy it is for a visitor to your
website to accomplish the action the
site is set-up for. For example, if
your goal is for the visitor to fill
out a form, is this form easily
accessible, or does the visitor have
to go through four levels to get to
it?
If it's too
difficult to get to, the customer
may just throw in the towel and move
on to another site. Make sure your
buttons are highly visible, and the
path to your form or ordering page
quickly accessible.
Finally, have a professional
evaluate the copy on your website.
The goal is, of course, to get your
visitor to make a purchase or fill
out your form. Website copy must be
specifically geared to your online
campaign and not just a cut and
paste job from your company
brochure.
The right copy
can make the difference between
profit and loss in your online
campaign.
