Evaulating web site performance

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Evaulating Web Site Performance

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Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet

marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site

depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your

website goals. If you don't know what you want your site to

accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish

anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and

monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online

announcement 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 a

representative can contact them, or purchasing a product,

there are steps you can take to insure that your website is

functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators

of how well your site is working for you is finding out the

number of visitors in a given period of time. A good

baseline measurement is a month in which you haven't been

doing any unusual offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through

your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually,

you want those visitors to actually do something there. It

is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to

your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the

site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the

efficacy of your website.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of

visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them

that actually performed the action your site is set up for.

For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only

25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion

rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of

visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors

who 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 a

form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is

between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion

rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form

will actually become your customer. However, whether your

site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the

visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will

measure the success or failure of your website whenever you

make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional

marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site

is extremely low. There are several effective methods to

improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly

launching a search engine optimization campaign. This

campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search

engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster

and easier. You can either research the steps you need to

take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a

search engine optimization company to do the work for you.

In either case, after your have improved your search engine

positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular

monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high

positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor

to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up

for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill

out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the

visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If

it's too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw

in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your

buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or

ordering page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your

website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to

make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be

specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a

cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right

copy can make the difference between profit and loss in

your online campaign.