Evaluating Web Site Performance

If you don't know what you want your site toaccomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplishanything. Without goals to guide you in developing andmonitoring your website, all your site will be is an onlineannouncement that you are in business.

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action,whether it is visitors filling out a form so arepresentative can contact them, or purchasing a product,there are steps you can take to insure that your website isfunctioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicatorsof how well your site is working for you is finding out thenumber of visitors in a given period of time. A goodbaseline measurement is a month in which you haven't beendoing any unusual offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed throughyour gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually,you want those visitors to actually do something there. Itis equally important to monitor the number of visitors toyour site who made a purchase. This figure is called thesite conversion rate, and it is an essential element of theefficacy of your website.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number ofvisitors per month and figure out the percentage of themthat actually performed the action your site is set up for.

For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only25 of them purchased your product, your site conversionrate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number ofvisitors and divide that figure by the number of visitorswho made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ?00 X 100).

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out aform, make sure to then figure out what the difference isbetween your site conversion rate and your sales conversionrate. This is because not everyone who fills out your formwill actually become your customer. However, whether yoursite is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get thevisitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate willmeasure the success or failure of your website whenever youmake changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additionalmarketing strategies if you find that traffic to your siteis extremely low. There are several effective methods toimprove the flow of traffic to your website, particularlylaunching a search engine optimization campaign. Thiscampaign is targeted at increasing your position in searchengine results so that consumers can find your pages fasterand easier. You can either research the steps you need totake to improve your search engine rankings, or employ asearch engine optimization company to do the work for you.

In either case, after your have improved your search enginepositions, make sure you keep on top of them by regularmonitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain highpositions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitorto your website to accomplish the action the site is set-upfor. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fillout a form, is this form easily accessible, or does thevisitor have to go through four levels to get to it? Ifit's too difficult to get to, the customer may just throwin the towel and move on to another site. Make sure yourbuttons are highly visible, and the path to your form orordering page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on yourwebsite. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor tomake a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must bespecifically geared to your online campaign and not just acut and paste job from your company brochure. The rightcopy can make the difference between profit and loss inyour online campaign.