Now is the time to introduce the performance analysis element to the process. An audit can be a scary concept especially when one considers the association with taxes. Fear not this is not even remotely the same, it is really a complete review of what you have and what you are doing with it so that you can use this information and components to improve. If you are interested in having Zanka Consulting do it check us out.
Initially we started out having the website as an online business card or brochure website, simple a place on the web where people can go to find out more about us. For a long time that was about it and we felt that was all we needed, until we looked at our success rate. Our performance measures were very simple
|
Time period |
Nov to Dec 2009 |
|
|
|
Metric |
Total |
Conversion rate |
$ value |
|
Number of unique visitors |
413 |
100% |
|
|
Number going to our “contact us” page (page visits) |
29 |
7% |
$150k |
|
Number of Calls/emails from web page |
1 |
0.2% |
$5K |
|
Number of sales |
0 |
0% |
$0 |
Some assumptions: $ value per customer is $5,000. This amount is only used as an example
Date was taken from Google analytics
Our conversion rate of visitors to leads to calls were basically 0 that is, it was an abject failure as a separate sales channel. This fortunately was not our only sales channel and as we tracked visitors, we were able to see an increase in visits when we made contact with potential clients, of which many did convert to sales. That was then and this is now – SEO, inbound marketing, social networking, iPhones (which I love) have all matured and evolved to appoint where if you have a business your success will depend on how well you use your online channel. So what to do.
The methodology is to first perform a review of the current assets of the website. Identify what is working and what is not, what content to keep, identify back links, page url’s that draw visitors, what the weblog files are telling you, and what performance metrics are being used today. Additional information can be gathered about the website such as user’s perception, usability, consistency in message, and so on.
Start with your Website Assets
Most organizations are in their third or fourth generation websites and they have built up assets on their websites Assets include:
· Content
o How many pages do you have?
o How many will be removed?
o Will pages move to a new URL?
o How many new pages will you create?
o What is your most popular content?
o What is your most powerful content?
· inbound links
o How many inbound links are there to my entire site?
o What inside or landing web pages have links?
o Where do my links come from?
o Which ones are the most powerful links?
· keyword rankings
o What are my keywords rank for today?
o What are my competitor’s keywords rank?
o What keywords should I want to rank for?
o How has my keyword rank changed over time?
· conversion tool
o What page or link generates most of my leads?
§ landing pages
§ shopping carts
§ “Free” white papers or other items of value to target customers
o What are my best conversion methods?
o How can I increase these conversions?
It is important to determine what assets you have and keep them, what doesn’t seem to be working or have much interest, then remove them ( but don’t throw them away, they may be useful just not the way you were using them in the past).
Measuring Website Assets
If you are using Google Analytics, you will need to look at a bunch of options, the first step is to set your date to cover the past 6 months if you have a lot of traffic or 12 months for smaller sites.
Use the content option to see which pages have the most visits and analyze these to see why would some one go there, usually the home page or “/” gets the majority of the visits but not always. On one site that I manage the job posting page usually exceeds the home page in traffic.
Check also referrals to see where traffic originates and also who sends it to you. Have a look at Google’s webmaster tools to see who is linking to your website and how many of those actually refer traffic. What this tells you is that you should keep the URL intact and analyze the page content for key words and how it reflects your website objectives.
You can also see the path that users take to get to this page.
