11.09 | 2004
Resolutions
Once again a new year is upon us and provides yet another opportunity for reflection on the past year
with eyes to the future. Now is the perfect time to consider the performance of your website over the past
year and what you can change heading into the new year.
Here’s a few questions you may already be asking yourself or should consider:
Did your website provide the ROI that you anticipated?
Were your marketing plans and budget adequate to drive the traffic you required to
your site?
Once visitors are at your site, what is the average time spent viewing pages before
they left?
Is there any pattern to the most common exit page?
Do you feel that your website is as good as or better than your competition?
How about the layout of your site, does it have “designed in 1998” written all over it?
Of course there are many more questions you could ask yourself, but we feel this is a good place to start
and focus your mindset on improving your site. Let’s take a closer look at the above points.
Did your website provide the ROI that you anticipated?
One common mistake is excluding your website from your marketing budget. Many companies will just build
a website and more or less forget about it. The truth is, today more than ever, your customers are looking
to your website for answers and service. If you feel that your website didn’t return it’s investment ,
you need to look into the reasons why. Is it presented in a way that benefits the customer and maximizes
their time? Can they find what they want? Will they tell their friends about what a great resource it is?
Were your marketing plans and budget adequate to drive the traffic you
required to your site?
When formulating a plan to drive traffic to your site, there is no single way to accomplish this. You need
more than a “ourCompany.com” printed on your ads or literature. Sure, that is something to continue, but
there are very effective online campaigns available to you that have nothing to do with Spam. To be effective,
an advertising campaign that includes targeted marketing for your website is a campaign waged on many fronts.
Once visitors are at your site, what is the average time spent viewing pages
before they leave?
Now that you have customers, and potential customers arriving at your virtual front door, the trick is
to get them to stay because they find something of value or interest. Statistics show that your website
has 3 seconds to grab their attention before they will click the back button and be gone. Yes, you read
that right, 3 seconds. It’s not very much time for you to make your point. You need to make sure that each
page of your site has a clear purpose to your customers. This is where professional design comes in to
play.
Is there any pattern to the most common exit page?
This goes hand in hand with the above topic. If people are leaving after viewing a page or two, then you
obviously need to re-think your design, content, or functionality. Perhaps your marketing is driving the
wrong type of customer to your website? Using all the facts from your web statistics and other sources,
you can craft a new plan to keep those visitors interested.
Do you feel that your website is as good as or better than your competition?
This point can be summed up by honestly looking at the “first impression” that your website makes. A visitor
to your site has no idea how you conduct business, if your company is honest in their dealings, will be
around to provide service in a timely manner, or ships products on time. A visitor to your site will decide
all of this, mostly subconsciously, while they view your pages. Without actually dealing with you directly,
your potential customer can only decide this by comparing how your site looks as opposed to your competition’s
site.
How about the layout of your site, does it have “designed in 1998” written all
over it?
What we mean by this is does your site have a current look to it. You need to be brutally honest with yourself
and look at all the competition’s websites, and prominent sites outside your industry. We as humans are
visual creatures, and an old looking site can be enough to turn visitors away before they get a chance
to know what a great company you are.
We hope that by pondering these points, and whatever train of thought they lead you to, will help you reassess
your websites place in your industry and if it’s as effective as it can be in the promotion and growth
of your company.
