Your Website and Its Power
Website Analysis - Information Is Power
If we build the website it they will come. But who are they, how many of them are there, how often do they visit and which keywords or links lured them there?
If you can’t answer those questions there’s a reasonable chance that you are not garnering everything you can from your website. The only reliable way to answer those questions is through some sort of website traffic analysis. Most web hosts offer varieties of statistics measurement tools. Regardless of the measurement method you use, whether it’s provided by your web host or one you manage yourself, it is essential that you understand how to read and understand the statistics and that you review them on a regular basis.
The wealth and diversity of the information that measurements provide can play a pivotal role in your marketing efforts. If it appears that you are getting a lot of visitors from search engines, then you need to keep cutting edge SEO on your site. If your visitors are coming to you from your links on other sites, then it’s important to understand what prompted them to click on your site. A careful analysis will tell you if your marketing plans are working.
As logical as it seems to keep statistical records about your website traffic, a surprising number of site owners (especially small businesses) don’t collect and review this information on a timely basis. In fact, a recent survey revealed that fewer than one in a hundred of small businesses use any kind of process for tracking and measuring the success of their sites. This is one reason why small businesses need web hosting services that can help them track and analyze this critical information.
Most small businesses look at their site statistics less than once a month. Very few use those numbers to make marketing decisions and even fewer use them to determine the success of their marketing efforts. You can give your site a substantial competitive advantage if you are diligent about measuring and analyzing your site’s data.
Here are some examples of the types of information that you can obtain through traffic analysis:
- Information about which pages were visited the most.
- Information about which of your pages was visited the least
- Keywords and phrases that have drawn visitors to your site
- Links that have lured visitors to your site
- Which search engines were used
- How your site is navigated by visitors
As this data comes together you will begin to get a very real sense of what you need to do to improve the content of your website. This allows you to strategize plans to increase your business and lets you know if the amounts of time and money you are spending your website are rendering the benefits you need to be successful. The last thing you want to do is to post an ineffective website that leaves your customers under whelmed and sends them clicking away to your competitors’ sites.
Your website is a key element in helping you to achieve specific business goals. Your goals are most likely geared toward exceeding your customers’ expectations, lowering your costs, improving your sales and cash flow and increasing productivity. A well-designed, well managed website that is properly and frequently measured can take you a long way toward success.
The competitive advantage that measurement can bring is becoming more and more critical as the internet continues to grow at staggering rates. Over time, vast numbers of internet users are turning to the web as their shopping source. The share of online Americans who say the internet has improved their ability to shop has doubled in the last five years (16 percent in March of 2001 up to 32 percent in April of 2006).
So what is the best way to measure your site’s success? Hits, visits, sessions, unique visitors, page views, cookies or trackers?
“There is no standard metric that a company can rely on for its website,” said Randy Souza, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass based Forrester Research. “Metrics will be different from company to company. “
While a retail site might be focused on a conversion rate (the number of online shoppers who actually buy something), a business-to-business site might value site reliability and speed above all.
What you really need to know is a combination of general and specific reports. Of course you want to know general things like how many unique visitors came to your site last month, what the percentage of returning visitors was, average amount of time per visit spent on the site and a breakdown of how visitors found it. But you also need to know more specific things like which group of content was the most popular, which keywords were used to find your site from a search engine or how many people took a particular “click path” that you designed when you built your site.
Talk to your web host about helping you to determine metrics that are the best fit for your site. Bear in mind that it’s not just about getting visitors to your site, it is about getting the RIGHT visitors to your site. Let the analysis drive your marketing plan and watch your profits grow. Information, after all, is power.
Copyright 2006 © Website Source, Inc.
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