Articles

How to Write Good Website Content

Any of you who have attended B2B Centre presentations and workshops or read our articles and newsletters will know that we constantly emphasise that content is king when it comes to search engine ranking and visitor conversion on your websites.

Gareth Edwards, NB2BC Associate eBusiness Consultant and Director of Arrowsmith Marketing, provides an overview of some of the key techniques to creating good website content.

 

What is website content?

When we talk about website content we are primarily referring to the page text. The writing that describes your organisation, tells readers what you make or sell and provides information about your customer wins, awards and financial successes.

It is important to get the page text right because it is one of the key elements to making websites and eMarketing work. But because we are using the web there is more to it than just writing copy.

For a start your information is being displayed on a computer screen which, despite massive improvements recently, is not ideal for reading from. Then there is the matter of hyperlinking to help site visitors to navigate around your site or guide them to external sources of information. Finally your content has a new and very different readership to your flesh and blood audience. Search engines are now very sophisticated and they, to all intents and purposes, really read what you write. They also look at other parts of your website to find out more about you.

Yes there is more to it than meets the eye. Let's look at some ways to be top of your game.

 

Planning

The key to success in writing good content is planning. For the purposes of this article I am going to assume that most of you are interested in promoting your business and selling your products and services rather than just writing general articles or pieces of copy.

The main areas to consider are as follows;

• What do you do and how is it of interest to visitors?
  Do you have a truly unique product or service, do you have exclusive rights to sell a product, do you provide a better service (e.g. Faster delivery) than the "big boys"), are you the only supplier in your locality (be it Leamington Spa, Warwickshire or the West Midlands) and can you promise a return on investment, reduced costs or a time saving?
  
  Thinking through this will allow you to develop a stronger proposition to offer site visitors. It also helps the keyword generation process.

 

• What do you want them to do when they get there (buy something directly using eCommerce, contact you by phone or eMail, download information etc.)?
  
  In our experience an amazing number of websites do not tell visitors what their options are or what to do next.

 

• Who are the visitors to your site - age, sex, nationality, industry, job type, consumers, business people, customers, shareholders etc.?
  
  Knowing more about visitors should guide the style of your writing. It also enables you to create entry points (especially on the home page) in text or graphical form that will attract the attention of different visitor groups and allow you to guide them to specific web pages designed for them.
  
  

• Why are they visiting the site (you might want to sell visitors something immediately but what do visitors want from the interaction - reassurance, finance terms, customer service details, prices etc.)?
  
  It is well worth asking visitors, clients and contacts what they want from your site. This research will also give you some clues as to how people search for you, your products and services
  
  

• How are they getting to the site (natural searches, referrals from other sites such as directories or through pay per click (Pay Per Click) ads)?
  
  This is important because you may need to write specific content to match what visitors saw when they were looking for you. For instance if a visitor clicked on a PPC ad offering a discount then the page that they are directed to needs to refer to the offer too.

 

Check out the website planning toolkit on the B2B website as a great aid this process.

 

Implementation

Content - reader's perspective

Readability

Here are some simple pointers to making it easier for site visitors to read any text that you have provided.

• Use a 12pt font or higher - smaller fonts will be difficult to read on screen. If in doubt black text on a white background can always be read.
  
  
• Standard fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial and Verdana are usually easier to read and are more likely to be available on visitors' computers.
  
  
• Split up text with sub-headings and bullet points. Somebody scanning the page should be able to get a good idea of the key messages without reading every word.
  
  
• Take out jargon, clichés and acronyms unless you are absolutely certain that all of the site or page visitors will understand them.
  
  
• Don't waffle and use simple sentences wherever possible.
  
  
• Don't be afraid to make readers scroll down the page but make sure that the most important messages and your call to action is visible "above the fold".

Take a look at Jakob Neilsen's useit website (http://www.useit.com) for some interesting research and tips on how to make website easier to use.

 

Function

The planning process will have provided you with information to ensure that the content you are providing fulfils the necessary function for both you and your site visitors.

 

Page Purpose

Content for each page needs to match the planned purpose of the page. The role of an "about us" page, for instance, is to provide information about the organisation's structure, workforce, skills, experience etc. that is relevant to its ability to deliver products and services. Additional information about the company can be provided but perhaps at the bottom of the page or via a hyperlink to separate "history" section.

Website Entry Points

If your site has a number of different visitor or user types then your content can be used to attract the attention of different groups, to provide them with a focused message and possibly direct them (via a hyperlink) to a different part of the website.

These "entry points" can be provided in text form (by simply saying something like "corporate users are provided with their own account manager - more information can be found in the corporate user section") or with linked graphics.

 

Navigation

Good content also supports user navigation around the site. This can be as simple as using reader oriented titles for menu bars and buttons. On a long requiring scrolling you could provide links at the top of the page to the subheadings used in the rest of the text.

 

Call to Action

Good website content should support and then state the desired action for the webpage.

For many of you the primary call to action is to generate an enquiry by phone or email with a secondary call to action to, perhaps, download an article or sign up for a newsletter. In these circumstances where your offer is not strongly defined it is worth highlighting the benefit to the prospect of making the effort to get in contact or fill in a form. You could restate the number of clients you have already helped solve a problem, offer a free one hour consultation or promise that product related information will arrive within the hour! Make them realize that they would be missing out by not signing up.

Whatever you do please remember to explain exactly what visitors need to do to take action (e.g. send an email or fill in a form). Also note that calls to action should be visible on all pages and not just the home page.

Retain Visitor Interest

Lots and lots of websites are plain boring. What can you do to stop people dropping off?

• Put yourself in their shoes. All of the information that you provide needs to relate to the interests, requirements and problems of your different user groups. Talk about benefits rather than features.
  
  
• Use pictures, video, animation and graphics to illustrate the theme or topic of the page and of individual sections and paragraphs. But be sparing. Irrelevant and overbearing pictures and clips will draw attention away from important messages.
  
  
• Use hypertext links to give readers the opportunity to get more detail on a particular subject.
  
  
• Follow the formatting guidelines outlined above to prevent the rapid onset of eyesore.
  
  
• Be different and be interesting. Small businesses, and particularly sole traders, can get away with expressing their personality and being wacky or outrageous (check out http://www.gillianwesleydesigns ).

If you are feeling less adventurous then utilize devices such as surveys or interviews to introduce a more customer-centric element to your content. Alternatively talk about staff activities such as charity events that highlight your businesses philanthropy and show off what a good team you have.

 

Content - search engine perspective

We have touched on the need to make content attractive to search engines to support keyword ranking and indexing. Fortunately one of the best ways of doing this is to.....write readable, meaningful text. The search engines read the text and make sense of it. They pick out keywords and phrases from what you have written and evaluate how "helpful" what you say is to prospective searchers. They are very, very sophisticated.

Let's have a look at some other ways you can create content which is search engine focused.

Keywords and phrases

We would need a separate article to do this subject justice. The good news is that if you have planned your content to describe your offers effectively and reflect the needs of your audience then the chances are that you have unwittingly defined some relevant keywords and phrases.

The important point to consider is how to define a phrase that balances three criteria;

1. Relevant to you and what you do
   
2. Has the potential to be used by a prospective customer
   
3. Has the lowest level of competition

Your chosen words and phrases should then appear at the beginning of paragraphs near the top of the page as well as being liberally sprinkled (up to say 4-5 times) through the rest of the page text.

 

Google has a free keyword research tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=3

 

Page titles

The page title tag of a Web page appears in the top left of the web browser and is a useful navigational aid. The title tag provides the search engine with a snapshot about the page and provides additional weighting for keywords and phrases. It is also used by search engines to populate the search engine results page so it should contain a compelling call to action.

Individual page titles should be created for each page on the site. Each one should contain a maximum of 10 words.

Page descriptions

The text found in the Page Description tag is believed (there is some debate on this) to be used by search engines to determine the theme or context of the page. The text (maximum 30 words) will be displayed to the user in the search results for some engines (particularly Google) so again it should be meaningful and relevant.

Alt Image Tags

The ALT text tag of an image is used to describe the graphic for those users who surf the web with the graphics turned off. It is also useful for those who are sight impaired and have software that reads the contents of Web pages to them. As search engines cannot read images, many will index the contents of ALT text and use it as part of the whole indexing process. The ALT text should be defined for each for each image, describe the image first while also including a keyword or phrase.

H1 Headings

Your headings and sub-headings can be tagged as html headings 1 through 5. This gives them a bit more weighting with the search engines especially when the heading contains a key word or phrase. In html editors such as NVU (www.NVU.com) and content management systems like Joomla (www.joomla.com), which are both free open source products this should be a pretty straightforward operation. Otherwise ask your developer.

Links and anchor text

Using meaningful text and keywords (e.g. "download a free trial of our aerospace focused erp system") in links rather than just "click here" is a useful way increase the weighting of the text by the search engines.

Summary

There is a lot to think about to keep your website content in tip-top condition.  Consider that there are always at least two audiences; search engines and real people.  Then remember that the eal people who visit your site need to be educated, sold to, amused or entertained in order for them to want to deal with you or come back.

Arrowsmith Marketing can help you develop your website content so contact us today for a free discussion on what you might be able to do.

 

eMarketing: Don't Forget Your Back-End (ohhh Matron with apologies to Kenneth Williams)

The focus of eMarketing is usually on the attraction of clients. There is a tendency to look at activities optimizing websites, developing inbound links, setting up directory entries, eMail campaigns and Pay-Per-Click (PPC). But if you only look at that side of your business there is a good chance that you will “come a cropper”.

 

Gareth Edwards, NB2BC Associate eBusiness Consultant and Director of Arrowsmith Marketing, takes a look at your back-end.

Problems

Consider this Christmas. No doubt it has broken all records for on-line spending (25million people spent over £3bn in November!). But it seems that it has also broken all records for customer dissatisfaction. My personal experience is one of great irritation. I have suffered;

• Very late delivery of gifts destined to spent overseas (but ordered back in November)
• Poor facilities to communicate with suppliers (standard email address or no phone number)
• No response from customer service departments
• Delivery companies that believe that delivery “will be between 9.00am and 5pm”is acceptable in 2006

My response is likely to be the same as everybody else. Those suppliers will be put on my black list and next time I will go elsewhere. There is, after all, plenty of choice.

So the onus is on those of you selling goods and services on the internet to sort yourselves out and look at your eMarketing effort.

eMarketing?

Some people will be asking what this has got to do with eMarketing – isn’t all to do with those people in operations? Actually no.

Firstly eMarketing (and marketing in general) is very much about managing the relationship with customers: attraction and retention are two sides of the same coin. There isn’t much spending money on getting customers to find you and make a purchase if you do things that scare them off.

Secondly consumers rarely buy the nuts and bolts core product on offer. They usually look at the overall value proposition that consists of the product plus a variety of other components and features. Finance, easy-to-access shops, free delivery, attractive packaging, on-going support, a trusted brand….it could be anything. If you don’t offer the right set of extras (which could include good service, fulfillment and delivery) that your target market wants, then prospects will simply go elsewhere at the click of a mouse. Sounds like a job for your eMarketers to me!

Thirdly if customers who have bought from you have problems post sale then there is a good chance you will lose them. Unless you sell something unique then they will find it easy to switch to your rivals. Don’t forget that dissatisfied customer have a nasty habit of telling other people when they have had a bad experience – viral marketing in its nastiest sense.

Retrieving The Situation

With Christmas 2006 disappearing into history you have got some time for a bit of structured analysis of your approach to dealing with the back-end of your business.

Complaints Are Gold Dust

Most people don’t bother to tell you if they are dissatisfied: they just go elsewhere. This means you need to treat complaints as vital clues as to what problems clients are facing and why. Use them to generate your short term action plan.

Data data everywhere

Use webstats, analytics and phone records (if you have a switchboard) to understand how people have tried to contact you for service and post-sale enquiries. Is there anything to suggest that visitors to your site gave up trying to get contact details or use enquiry forms? If you provided a phone number then check your phone records to ensure there aren’t any problems with the number of lines or operator staffing. If your business is set up right then there will not be a shortage of data to look at.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes

Try going through the ordering and fulfillment process yourself (or get someone to act as a mystery shopper) and see what happens. Are you happy with the speed of delivery or the delivery arrangements? Do you get a good response from eMails or phone calls? If the answer to either of these questions is no then imagine how your customers feel? It still surprises me that some people don’t go through this process as a matter of course.

Supplier Audit

Now might be a good time to check the small print in the contracts you have with some of your suppliers and contractors. Are they sticking to service level agreements (SLAs)? Are the SLAs adequate in light of your commitment to improve service to your clients?

Shout About It

If you are actually as good at fulfilling customer orders as you are at making sales then review your website copy, your eMail campaigns and your PPC ads to ensure that your customers know about it. If you can turn an order around overnight, if you use delivery services offering specific delivery times, or if your customers regularly tell you how great you are then put it on your website, in your newsletter and in a press release. It could be an opportunity to gain some competitive advantage over your rivals

Summary

What happens after customers make a purchase could make or break your on-line business. Taking an eMarketing approach to putting problems right is the only way to make sure the solution is geared towards your customers’ (and ultimately your) best interests. Take time to look at your back-end now!

TopTen Tips for eMarketing Success

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Bill Gates has just said "The digital decade is happening."

If you are still languishing in the digital dark ages here are the B2B Centre's Top Ten Tips to drag you kicking and screaming into Bill's world (not necessarily with all the money unfortunately!).  In reverse order.

 

10. Plan for Success

If you haven't already developed an e-Marketing plan then get one quick.

Our experience is that clients who fail to plan tend to fritter time and money trying to deal with issues and opportunities on an ad hoc basis. Will it be a good idea to spend £500 for one month's PPC (pay-per-click) campaign? Or should the money have been invested in software to develop and operate an email newsletter campaign?

Avoid those problems upfront. If you are in the Midlands read about our e-Marketing offering or contact the This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for advice on e-Marketing planning, you might be eligible for consultancy support.

9. Brag!

Sit down for 10 minutes and write down all of the great things that you and your business have achieved over the past 12 months - business wins, new products, new people, you name it.

Then use all of the fantastic e-Marketing tools at your disposal to tell the world. Blogs, electronic press releases and email newsletters are all great ways to distribute your good news. Your clients, prospects, your employees and your shareholders will read it and be impressed. And there's a bonus. Search engines can see this stuff too, and you are giving them more material to help index your site and rank your pages.

8. Cuddle Up To A Client

Who are the experts on your e-Marketing? Well hopefully you are getting good at it by now. We think we know a thing or two. But the real experts are your customers. If you do it right then they will buy from you once and keep buying from you.

This means that it is a good idea not only to do a bit of bragging to them but also to enlist their expertise. If you are getting the response you expect from email campaigns, if your eCommerce sales or customer retention rates are falling or if you can't define the right keywords then ask.

Use free or low cost online survey tools such as (SySurvey, FreeOnlineSurveys, or Zoomerang - all available to trial free). Email or phone customers with specific questions about how your website works for them. Set up focus groups to see exactly how clients and prospects search for products and services. What keywords do they use? How easy is for them to find products on your site?

7. D'main Thing

The main thing (terrible pun - ed.) is to do a bit of research on your domain names and hosting arrangements.

It is important to find out where your website is actually being hosted (try using the Webconfs domain stats tool). Search engines are sensitive to the physical location and your rankings maybe adversely affected if you have a .co.uk domain name which is hosted elsewhere. If you have both .com and .co.uk domains but you are primarily UK focused then it is worth making sure that your .co.uk address is the primary domain and that the .com is redirected to it.

If you only have one domain registered then it is worth looking at the availability of other domains for your URL such as .com or .eu or .biz. This will protect you against rivals being naughty and helps your prepare for future international success!

6. Don't Forget The Backend

If you haven't already read our e-Marketing: Don't Forget Your Back-End article in this issue's newsletter then please do so now.

E-Marketing isn't just about promoting your company and selling things, it is about satisfying client needs in the long term. If you can't deliver what you sell then you won't have a long term.

5. Measure Up

Imagine a situation where you didn't know how many clients you had, how many projects you were working on or how many employees you had. Not a good place to be I think that you would agree. So why is it that many of the people that we deal with have no idea about visitor traffic to their website, how many people gave up at the home page, who responded to the latest newsletter or called the contact telephone number?

If you want to know what's going on then as a minimum you need to get your ISP (Internet Service Provider) to provide you with weekly or monthly websites (this should be free). Even better use analytics products such as (Statcounter, or Google Analytics) to provide you with incredibly detailed information about which visitors to your website are, how they found you and what they did when they got there.

Then make sure that your e-Marketing activity supports your measurement process. For instance create specific email addresses or ‘phone numbers for specific marketing campaigns. This means that you will be able to directly track their effectiveness. If you use PPC (pay-per-click) advertising then develop specific webpages (known as landing pages) matching the theme of particular ads. This means that you can track how clients behave when they see particular ads and ensures that you provide relevant messages too.

4. Long Arm Of The Law

If you want to keep out of the reaches of m'lud then you need to take some immediate action.

The Companies Act has changed and we are all obliged to put formal company information on websites and business related electronic communications (which for ease we will assume is all emails).

So don't forget to add to your website and your email signature - registered address, company status (e.g. public limited company), company number and VAT number.

If you don't have an email signature set up already, then check out the December newsletter for an article that tells you exactly how.

3. Spot The Sitemap

Hopefully we don't need to tell you that a sitemap is a webpage containing links to all of the other pages on you website. It is a handy navigational tool for visitors but its primary importance is in helping search engines recognize and index your site. The search engines follow each link in turn to understand and "note down" what pages are available. If a page isn't indexed then it is pretty much invisible to everybody on the World Wide Web.

If you don't know how many pages on your website are indexed then try using Marketleap which has a free search engine saturation (how many pages are recognized) tool that provides figures for Google, MSN and Yahoo.

Is also worth considering submitting a specially formatted site map to Google - check out the Google Webmaster Tools area of the Google site for information.

2. Key Words

Let's clear up some confusion straight away. The list of keywords that appears in the meta tags section of the html code for your web pages are NOT the things that will be used by the search engines to decide what your keywords are and where you should be ranked.

Search engines identify your keywords and phrases by reading the text on your webpage. They then work out what ranking your site gets on particular keywords and phrases by making sense of the way you use them. The search engines are very, very clever.

So what help can we give you in choosing keywords. Perhaps the first tip is to be realistic. If you have just decided to set up an eCommerce site to sell chart CDs and you haven't got a million pounds to spend then getting a page 1 ranking on Google for the word "CD" is just not going to happen. These words and phrases are the subject of intense, and expensive, competition.

Secondly follow our advice and "Cuddle Up To A Customer". Don't guess how people search for your products and services....ask them directly. Our experience is that customers are getting pretty savvy in the way they find what they want. They know that they can choose the UK versions of the search engines to get more results from providers in this country. They also increasingly use geographical or descriptive qualifiers to get what they want, "Iron Gates Leamington" or "Kitchen Tiles Terracotta Kidderminster", for instance.

Thirdly if you can't ask or you don't get an answer use tools like Wordtracker (free trial), Overture or the Google AdWords keyword tool to check the popularity of keywords and to provide additional words to consider.

1. Content Is King

What is the most important part of your e-Marketing?

We believe that it is what you say about your company and its products and services, how you communicate with clients and prospects and your ability to get them to take action (like pick up the phone and call you or make a purchase online).

At the moment that often isn't the area where most effort is made. More of the budget is spent on design or technology or advertising. You would be surprised how many of our clients forget to actually say what they do, who they do it for, what the client will get out of it and how you buy it.

Your content expressed in words and pictures is what people see (and increasingly hear) and are influenced by. Your words are what the search engines read and assess for keywords and rankings.

Our number one tip is to review your content and make it work for you!

Summary

We have tried to pull together some important advice to get you going in this New Year. Of course there are plenty of other things we could suggest.

Don't forget to check out the Toolbox on the B2B Centre website for loads more information and great tools. And we are running loads of workshops and networking events this year - we look forward to seeing you and helping you to make it your digital decade.

 

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The two extremes of website measurement for the B2B Centre’s SME clients are summed up in the following scenarios:

Firstly, when we ask the question “Do you look at your web statistics?” many people shuffle awkwardly and tell us that they don’t get any or that they looked at them a few months ago but haven’t checked recently.

In the second scenario, our clients come to us saying their site is no good because they’re not selling anything or generating any enquiries.

Both these situations flag up, in different ways, that website owners’ need some help thinking about measuring website performance.  Gareth Edwards, examines what to measure, how to measure and what to do about the results.

This article was first published for the National B2B Centre.

Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width

In previous articles such as “A website is for life and not just for Christmas”, we have explored the concept that just getting a website designed, built and launched is such a big deal for SMEs that there is a tendency to think “Phew, thank goodness that’s done” when the site is live.   Measurement is not a big issue.

The site is judged on what it looks like, first and foremost.  After that, performance is measured on a) sales, if it’s an e-commerce site and b) enquiries if it’s a “brochure” site.  What constitutes success for either sales or enquiries has often not been defined and clearly no other metrics are being looked at.  The problem with this approach is that we’re not looking widely enough to really understand what’s going on, let alone do something about it.

These issues are compounded by the fact that people are unaware of the tools that are available to help them.  Basic website statistics are almost always available from hosting companies and, as we shall see, there are some other very useful ways to find out what’s going on. 

Benefits of Measurement

So why should you spend more time on website measurement?  Well, it’s quite straightforward really.  By measuring the right factors you can:

1. Set up your website correctly in the first place.  So if you have an objective of attracting customers from new market sectors, then having focused landing pages and including market-related questions in registration forms might help you to measure success in this area.
   
   
2. Find out what’s really happening with your website in terms of technical, business and visitor performance.  Is the site profitable, are your directory entries generating traffic and your calls to action effective?
   
   
3. Understand why you are getting your particular results.  Lack of sales could be down to poor keyword performance so no-one gets to your site, lacklustre website copy that doesn’t grab visitors’ attention or a problem with your online payment facility.
   
   
4. See where you have issues so that you can do something about them.  As the saying goes “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”
   
   
5. See where you are achieving success so that you can repeat the gains elsewhere.  If you are generating traffic from a high ranking keyword then find out how you have got that ranking and repeat it for other keywords.
   
   
6. Monitor performance over time and see the effects of changes to the site infrastructure, new product launches, marketing campaigns etc.

What to Measure

The first step in the B2B Centre’s website planning process asks users to spell out their business (and marketing) objectives.  Even if you’re not starting from scratch, this is a good approach.

Two things are really important in this process.  Firstly, including quantifiable objectives (e.g. number of customers, sales, new products etc.) that give you both a measure and a target and secondly, ensuring that you drop down to as great a level of detail as possible.  For instance, use your knowledge of the market to define the number of enquiries (for all sources) that you will need to achieve a given level of sales.

For some of our clients’ personnel, this exercise can be a bit of an eye opener as well as something of a challenge since it forces them to consider their business model.  It is an essential introduction into the next step which is defining specifically what the objectives of the website are and therefore what to measure.

Let’s split out some of the measurement areas to throw more light onto possible factors to look at.  We’ll start with the business side of things and then move on to look at some of the underlying factors that are worth measuring, including more technical aspects such as site traffic and search engine performance.

Remember this isn’t an exhaustive list; we want to prompt you to think about what measures are relevant to you.

Business

Here, we need to consider the role the website is going to play in meeting the previously defined business objectives. For instance, if you want to increase sales to existing customers, how much of the increase do you expect to come from the website in terms of direct sales or enquiries and how will you measure it?

Some examples of business related metrics that you might need to observe and set targets for are:

• Sales (by product line, customer, country or region etc.)
  
• Revenue
  
• Profitability (by sale, product line etc.)
  
• Prospect conversion rate
  
• Enquiries (by form, email, phone or even Internet Messenger)

This list is highly dependent on the nature of your business.  So think about what’s important and involve business advisers and accountants to help make the choice.

Website Traffic

This section is concerned with how many people get to your site and how they get there.  These are indicators as to the effectiveness of search engine optimisation and eMarketing.

• Number of site visitors
  
  
• Geographical location
  
  
• How did they get to the site?
  
  
  • Typed in a URL (was it a promotional URL on packaging or in a print ad)
    
    
  • Referral from a directory, another website, an affiliate programme or a banner ad.
    
    
  • Pay Per Click (PPC) click through
    
    
  • Natural search via a search engine and which search engines were used
    
    
  • Search terms used: literally what keywords and phrases people have used to get to you

Site Related

Site related metrics will help you understand how effective the structure, navigation and usability of the site are.  They may also point to shortcomings in your website copy.  Is your proposition articulated strongly enough and are your “calls to action” effective?

• Bounce rates per page - did visitors hit a page and then navigate away from your site or did they follow a link to another page on your website?

• Navigation paths – what path did visitors take, was it what you expected and what were visitors interested in?

• Subscription/registration – to eMail newsletters for instance

• Repeat visits

• Downloads (e.g. product information or location maps)

 

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

SEO measures have been included to emphasise the fact that optimisation is an on-going process.  Performance needs to be checked regularly because other people are likely to be competing against you for the same keywords and phrases and the same audience.  At least check the following:

• Visibility – how many pages on the site are indexed by the search engines?
  
  
• Number and quality of inbound links - from directories, affiliate programmes and partners
  
  
• Keyword ranking – where does your site appear in the search engines for your targeted keywords

 

Customer Related

Last in the list but not least in importance are measures related to customer experience.

• Brand awareness – does your target audience really know what you do?
  
  
• How did they find you?
  
  
• Where else do they look?
  
  
• Why did they buy (or not)?
  
  
• What did they think of the website experience?
  
  
• What else would they like to see (products, information, support etc.)?

 

How to Measure

The previous section might have been a lot to take in and you could be forgiven for thinking that it would be an impossible job to collect, monitor and analyse all of those figures.  Fortunately there are a variety of tools and techniques to help.  Let’s run through them quickly.

Website Statistics

We have never had a situation where stats weren’t available from a hosting company – and they are invariably free.  If you don’t get them automatically then check on their website to see if they have a “my account” or “user console” that gives you access.  If not, contact them for details of how to get to them via a web browser.

Web stats give some raw information to work with.  They usually provide details about visitor numbers, search terms, entry and exit pages, the most popular pages and, sometimes, referring sites.

The great strength of web stats is that they give you a baseline from which to measure activity over a period of time.  Don’t treat them as gospel truth because they will be distorted by, for instance, visits by search engine spiders.

It is important to look at the page view number as a more accurate figure for numbers of real visitors.

It’s best to ignore page hits because they count the download of individual elements of the website (e.g. graphics) separately.

Analytics

A separate B2B Centre article is dealing in more detail with web analytics, specifically Google Analytics, which outlines how you can use it in your business and how to register .

Fundamentally web analytics are extremely powerful tools that give real insights into how visitors get to your site and, most importantly what they do when they get there.  Analytics make it possible to see what paths visitors take through your site, what links they click on and at what point in the process they decide to abandon the site.  You can set goals (such as getting a visitor to a contact page or product page) and then analyse the conversion rate.

The B2B Centre strongly recommends that you use analytics to measure website performance – don’t forget that a number of analytics tools are completely free.  You might need the help of your website developer to install them if you don’t have control over your website.

B2B Centre SEO Tool

The B2B Centre has recently launched an SEO tool to help you review the performance of your site in search engine terms.  The specific measures available include the number of inbound links, keyword rankings and keyword competitiveness.  It also allows you to see details such as numbers of H1 headings which are an important part of improving the competitiveness of your site.

Some people find the topic of search engine optimisation confusing.  Try ignoring the jargon and thinking about search engines as one of your live customers.  SEO metrics can then be seen as indicators as to the usability of your site and how effectively you are promoting it.

Site Feedback & Surveys

You probably have your email address and phone number on your site.  But are they specific to the site so you can differentiate contact generated from a site visit?  Do you have different contact details for different aspects of site operation (e.g. sales or customer service)?  Plety of our clients tell us that their website isn’t generating any enquiries…..and then admit that they have no way of telling if a call or email was inspired by an initial visit to their site.

Getting direct information from site users and customers is very valuable.  It will tell you what works and what doesn’t.  Some of our clients make a point of asking their customers what search terms they use and how they qualify searches to get to what they want (e.g. do they type in the name of a town or a designer label?).

On the website, it’s easy to add a feedback email address or a simple response form.  There are also a variety of online survey tools (e.g. Key Survey) that add a professional and structured approach to getting real customers’ views.  Check around for free trials and the best packages to suit your needs.

Direct customer information can be so powerful that it’s worth offering an incentive to get it; a free download of a reference manual, entry into a prize draw or even a discount on a purchase.

Making Changes

Measurement results will tell you how your website (and probably your business) is doing.  What they also give you is an indication of where to make changes.  Some of these changes may be to the website itself, for instance reviewing page titles to enhance search engine performance or altering website copy to promote a company or a product more effectively.

Other changes might be external to the site.  Increasing the number of quality, inbound links is an obvious example.  Looking at the wider online and offline promotion of your business is another.  It might even lead you to reviewing competitor activity (see the B2B Centre article on “Online Competitor Activity”) to see if that reveals anything about your own performance.

The key to website measurement success is to establish your checklist of metrics and targets and set the timescale for checking for each one.  It should be possible to prioritise your measures, based on the nature of your business, to give you an indication of how frequently to check them.

And Finally

The intention of the article was to flag up why it is so important to think beyond the very basic measures of website performance.  As we have seen there is plenty that you could look at and a variety of ways to capture and monitor the statistics.  What we ask you to do next is think about your business and your website and consider what specifically you should be measuring.