OK, you have your brand-new sparkling site shimmering in the internet-sphere but how do you know how well it is performing for you?

In order to maximise the returns from your website, it is essential you know how visitors are interacting with your site. At the very least this will mean tracking the numbers of visitors and which pages they visit. From our earlier article, you’ll also be tracking the Conversion Rate of customers whether in Sales or Enquiries, but if these fail to materialise at the expected rate then you’ll need some options to improve performance.

Firstly, carry out a non-technical sense check. Ask some basic questions such as:

‘Are visitors making enquiries / sales via another medium ( direct e-mail, phone calls) and are you counting these correctly?’
‘Are there any direct comparisons with the Rate of Return versus other media?’
‘Are all obstacles to conversion removed, are you asking for only the minimum of information?’

If you are satisfied that the fundamentals for these are in place then the next step is to dive in further to some of the visitor data. There are many advanced statistics packages, but one of the best Free packages is Google Analytics. Using these packages you can view items such as Bounce Rate (how many visitors leave your site as soon as they arrive) , Time Spent on Page and even where customers drop out during your sales process.

By analysing these items you can identify which pages are underperforming and address these issues, maybe by rewriting copy or making the next steps move obvious.

Finally you should ensure that you are gathering customer feedback at all levels. Try to include a feedback form or contact detail on every page and actively encourage feedback using appropriate incentives. This feedback can be invaluable in optimising your site for visitors and can often throw up some interesting input that slipped by in the design process.

Once you’ve been through these processes you’ll be approaching a fully-effective website, but don’t sit back. Keep trying new ideas, keep monitoring and you’ll always be one step ahead of the competition.