It is a commonly accepted truth that having a web presence is a requirement for a successful business. This could be debated, though that is not the purpose of this article. It is easy to get caught up in what others are doing, be it individual competitors or the industry as a whole; however, if you have a business and you are pursuing a new or re-developed web presence you may want to ask yourself an important question:
What do I want my website to do?
I suspect that the most common answer to that will be to “bring in more business.”
There is a proliferation of brochure websites online, which have their place and purpose. Typically the purpose of such a site is to provide information and entice prospective clients to make contact. To obtain meaningful measurements you need a specific action to measure. In this particular case a contact us form requires an action by a user which can be captured by a tool such as Google Analytics. By measuring this you can compare overtime how many people visit your website and what proportion actual complete the desired action. You can then try to adjust content or design to encourage more conversions.
If—on your brochure website—you simply have your address, phone number and email address it is more difficult to measure the effectiveness of your website for bringing in business. Sure, you can ask new clients how they found you though you will lack records of the statistics with which you can compare results over time.
As the web has matured and websites are becoming web applications the number and diversity of actions users can take has grown a great deal. Users can sign up, log in, purchase, download, upload, share, view, edit, comment, post and interact with a system in a number of ways.
Because of the growing complexities of websites and web applications it is vital that you, the client, have a clear picture of the main objective(s) of you project. Of course, we can help define these objectives by drawing on years of experience. Once the objectives are defined it becomes a matter of identifying the metrics with which to measure the success of your website.
The importance of measuring your website is to provide support of your investment; allowing the business owner to prove to employees, investors or other stakeholders the value gained through the endeavor. Additionally, businesses can monitor growth and effectiveness of campaigns quickly and easily, allowing for an increased ability to adapt in the quest to reach the desired goals.
