| Article Index |
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| More Measurement is Marvellous |
| More Measurement is Marvellous Part 2 |
| More Measurement is Marvellous Part 3 |
| More Measurement is Marvellous Part 4 |
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Page 1 of 4
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:- 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.
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.”
- 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.
- Monitor performance over time and see the effects of changes to the site infrastructure, new product launches, marketing campaigns etc.