Is Your Website Working as Hard as It Could?
By: Susan Remley, Head of Marketing Consulting Group and Joni Van Natter
Your website is much more than just an online brochure: it is a billboard, a 30-second spot, and a newspaper ad all rolled into one. You would never purchase traditional sales and marketing tools without a pre-determined way to measure the return on your investment (ROI), and you shouldn’t purchase a website without a way to measure the ROI either.
In order to know if your website is achieving its intended purpose, you must begin with a clear and quantifiable definition of success. Some companies define success by product sales or email inquiries, but what happens when your idea of success is knowing that users consume the information on your website? How will you know if that has actually happened? This information can be provided through something called Website Analytics.
Website analytics are statistics gathered automatically by either analytic software running on your web server, or by code that has been placed inside your web pages. This software (or code) gathers information, such as how many individuals visited your web pages, how long they stayed, the number of times a specific web page was viewed and what the users did once they left the page. Many sophisticated analytic software programs can provide more detailed information, like identifying the search engine that was used to refer the user to your site; the key words people used to get to your website; the most popular routes, or paths, users used to traverse your site; and the top entry and exit pages. Once all the data has been collected, it is then grouped together to illustrate trends and provide information for analysis.
The information provided through website analytics can be analyzed to determine whether you need to make changes to your website. For example, if you need to know that users are consuming the information you provided on a particular page, take a look at the average amount of time your users spent there. If the time indicated is too short, your users are likely not reading it, so you can consider re-writing the information or reconfiguring the layout. If the time is appropriate for the amount of information that is on the page, then you can likely declare your project a success. If, however, the time seems longer than necessary, consider the possibility that your users may be reading it and leaving it up for repeated reference – a definitely possibility and an excellent outcome.
If your website is not being hosted by a company that provides thorough analytical data, consider changing your host company or implementing a third-party solution such as Google Analytics. Statistics are averages so it is important to allow ample time for data to be collected before analysis occurs.
In today’s economy, every dollar counts. The best way to make sure you’re getting a ROI online is through analytics.
Susan Remley is Senior Marketing Consultant and head of Jaffe’s Marketing Consulting Group. She thanks Joni Van Natter for her assistance on this article. Susan can be reached at sremley@jaffepr.com or 804-302-2894.