WEB METRICS
Getting the most from your website
Your website ought to be an integral part of your marketing strategy - and you should be applying all the basics of marketing to the site. Just as with any marketing tool, your website requires research and planning.
User on the Web are impatient - they want immediacy. You have just five seconds to get their attention when they land on your home page. To successfully convert them into customers, your homepage has to focus their atteniton and fulfil their needs. You have to draw them into your site to that all important revenue-producing click.
If your home page doesn't immediately answer their question - 'why am I here and can they solve my problem' - they leave. Your competition is one click away. 66% of all sales are lost right on the home page.
The Web has moved from being a new information medium to a sales channel. Studies show that lead generation has overtaken e-commerce as the main reason to have a website. Your marketing department should be intimately involved with your website and they need to know exactly who is coming to the site and why.
The measurements you keep have to fit your business and your audience. The days of just getting a website up and counting eyeballs and hits is long gone. You need to know where they come from, what they came for, how long they stay, which pages they visit, what their click path is and if they ever reach your "goal page." And you should know which page they leave from.
As the New Year approaches many businesses will be re-evaluating their web presence - before you invest in costly redesigns, update your Web measurement strategy with new metrics and tools that can help analyze customer behavior and improve your site's business success.
ROI from your website
There is no one metric that a company can rely on for its website," said Randy Souza, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, in an interview with CIO magazine. "Metrics will be different from company to company."
Your metrics will depend on what you are trying to do with your site. Before you do a revamp of your site, do your research and formulate a strategy for the site. If you have an e-commerce site you should be focused on conversion ratio (number of visitors to buyers), while a business-to-business site might be measuring visitor response to information. The number of reaches into the company as a result of the website will be of prime importance.
One mid-size, family-owned company in California revamped their website recently and started to keep track of their visitors. Analyzing user behavior led to website tweaks and they just got their first million dollar deal as a direct result of their website.
Usability guru Jakob Nielsen reports that user testing and analysis of traffic on your site can increase your ROI by an average of 135%.
Tracking Your Visitors
Measuring a website's success is becoming vital as e- business spending has to be defended. "Until the recession hit, there wasn't much urgency around Web metrics," says Forrester Research's Souza in the interview with CIO. The focus has shifted to getting business results, and quickly. Jupiter Research estimates that by 2006 annual spending on site analytics will reach $1 billion
Once your site has been researched and user tested install a reliable, simple to use traffic tracking system. Clicktracks is one that any entrepreneur can afford. In my opinion it is one of the best in terms of value and information. It is visual and interactive and can be put on any website
It allows you to tag different visitors and to see exactly where they click on your site. It will give you all the data you need to see where your visitors came from, where they are going and how they get there.
Marketing Departments and Information Technology Managers are starting to work together to take control of their website content and visitor click streams. With this valuable data on visitor behavior, it is possible to consistently improve results from your website.
Sally Falkow is a Web Content Strategist based in Pasadena, CA.
She is the author of WebSense – Effective website strategies for entrepreneurs. For a free evaluation of your home page visit www.falkoweb.com
Getting the most from your website
Your website ought to be an integral part of your marketing strategy - and you should be applying all the basics of marketing to the site. Just as with any marketing tool, your website requires research and planning.
User on the Web are impatient - they want immediacy. You have just five seconds to get their attention when they land on your home page. To successfully convert them into customers, your homepage has to focus their atteniton and fulfil their needs. You have to draw them into your site to that all important revenue-producing click.
If your home page doesn't immediately answer their question - 'why am I here and can they solve my problem' - they leave. Your competition is one click away. 66% of all sales are lost right on the home page.
The Web has moved from being a new information medium to a sales channel. Studies show that lead generation has overtaken e-commerce as the main reason to have a website. Your marketing department should be intimately involved with your website and they need to know exactly who is coming to the site and why.
The measurements you keep have to fit your business and your audience. The days of just getting a website up and counting eyeballs and hits is long gone. You need to know where they come from, what they came for, how long they stay, which pages they visit, what their click path is and if they ever reach your "goal page." And you should know which page they leave from.
As the New Year approaches many businesses will be re-evaluating their web presence - before you invest in costly redesigns, update your Web measurement strategy with new metrics and tools that can help analyze customer behavior and improve your site's business success.
ROI from your website
There is no one metric that a company can rely on for its website," said Randy Souza, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, in an interview with CIO magazine. "Metrics will be different from company to company."
Your metrics will depend on what you are trying to do with your site. Before you do a revamp of your site, do your research and formulate a strategy for the site. If you have an e-commerce site you should be focused on conversion ratio (number of visitors to buyers), while a business-to-business site might be measuring visitor response to information. The number of reaches into the company as a result of the website will be of prime importance.
One mid-size, family-owned company in California revamped their website recently and started to keep track of their visitors. Analyzing user behavior led to website tweaks and they just got their first million dollar deal as a direct result of their website.
Usability guru Jakob Nielsen reports that user testing and analysis of traffic on your site can increase your ROI by an average of 135%.
Tracking Your Visitors
Measuring a website's success is becoming vital as e- business spending has to be defended. "Until the recession hit, there wasn't much urgency around Web metrics," says Forrester Research's Souza in the interview with CIO. The focus has shifted to getting business results, and quickly. Jupiter Research estimates that by 2006 annual spending on site analytics will reach $1 billion
Once your site has been researched and user tested install a reliable, simple to use traffic tracking system. Clicktracks is one that any entrepreneur can afford. In my opinion it is one of the best in terms of value and information. It is visual and interactive and can be put on any website
It allows you to tag different visitors and to see exactly where they click on your site. It will give you all the data you need to see where your visitors came from, where they are going and how they get there.
Marketing Departments and Information Technology Managers are starting to work together to take control of their website content and visitor click streams. With this valuable data on visitor behavior, it is possible to consistently improve results from your website.
Sally Falkow is a Web Content Strategist based in Pasadena, CA.
She is the author of WebSense – Effective website strategies for entrepreneurs. For a free evaluation of your home page visit www.falkoweb.com
posted by Sally at 6:14 AM
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