measuring the success of your website

When you first commission a website, you will have some idea of the benefits you expect it to deliver. Perhaps it should attract customers from search engines or present a more professional image for your business.

After it is up-and-running, it is vital to measure the success of the site so that you can fix any problems and keep it effective and constantly improved.

Many businesses will measure a website's success by the end results - how many sales it has generated, how much good feedback it gets, etc.

However, there is a lot to be learnt by digging deeper and reviewing all aspects of a website's performance, including its presence in search engines, the number of visitors it gets (and which pages they visit) and the tangible results you get from it.

You should regularly review a website's position in search engines (such as Google, MSN & Yahoo) and note which key phrases you perform well in and which you don't. This will tell you where your website's 'search engine optimisation' is failing.

You should also get to grips with the traffic reports available for your website. If you've never seen these, contact your web designer or web host and ask for a regular copy. Amongst many things, traffic reports show:

• The number of visits your site receives
  
• The pages that are visited most
  
• The keywords typed in to find you in search engines
  
• Which other websites refer visitors to yours
  

Finally, you should analyse the visible results your website delivers. This could mean sales leads, email enquiries, online purchases or anything else you can see happening.

If you don't know how many of your sales leads or enquiries are generated by your website, find out. Start asking customers how they heard about you and track leads back to their source. Then you can track your website's effectiveness over time.

Armed with all of this information, you should be able to identify which areas of your website could be improved.

Should the site be better optimised to get into the search engines for specific keywords?

Do you need to drive visitors to areas of the site that you want them to see?

Could the conversion rate be improved by changing content or making it easier to find important elements?

If you would like some advice on measuring your website's effectiveness or improving the results it delivers, please get in touch.

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