Keep track of your website

When it comes to evaluating your online brand, it is very important to have a strong handle on web metrics. Most business owners I know have outsourced their web hosting to independent third parties because they either don’t have the expertise themselves, or just don’t want the hassle of maintaining a website. This is fine, but it is downright foolish to not review your analytics at least once per month. If you’ve never seen an analytics report for your website, then it’s time to learn what it’s all about.

First, make sure your web host currently has the reporting tools necessary to track your website’s effectiveness. Send your webmaster an email and ask what type of web metrics are available to you. The largest web hosts such as GoDaddy.com and 1and1.com have analytics built in. Others have add-ons you can pay for. You also have the option of inputting some code directly into your home page for free through Google Analytics. There are some standard web measurements (in addition to page views and unique visitors) that every business owner should be able to recite as if they were your phone number.

I suggest you start with the following:

• New user conversion. There are two types of visitors to your website; those who have been there before and those that are brand new. You must be able to distinguish between the two types because a repeat visitor will go to certain areas on your website that he or she deems to be of most added value. This is important information for you. Furthermore, by isolating the new visitor, you can determine what he or she sees in a visit so that you can focus your efforts on improving that specific user experience.

• Value per visit. The ultimate goal of any website should be to drive business revenue (and profits) higher. By tracking an initial visitor through the value chain to an ultimate purchase of your service or product, you can calculate the number of interactions necessary to yield a dollar increase in sales. This calculation is very important so that you have a better sense of the return of investment for your website as a whole and whether or not it makes economic sense for you to pay for advertising (on websites like Facebook and Google).

• Entry sources. Visitors to your website will come from three places: referral sites (on which your URL was mentioned); search engines (in which someone found you); or direct visitors (a user typed in your web address in a browser). By having a clearer understanding of where your web traffic is coming from, you can prioritize your marketing strategy and optimally allocate your scarce investment dollars. Related to this analytic is your most common entry page. Sometimes, users don’t arrive at the home page but at some direct link within your website. This is a tactic that is often used to promote a specific product or service among a portfolio of offerings.

• Exit pages. It is important to know how users got there and why they left. By examining the analytics of exit pages, you can determine at what point a user abandoned an online connection with you. Sometimes, this analysis makes sense because it confirms the action you were looking for all along (e.g., click here to buy, or contact me directly via email). However, it’s bad news if the exit page was a long video that bored the user or a tedious PDF document explaining your return policy.

Of course, related to this is my favourite measurement of all — length of stay. This refers to the stickiness of your website. The longer a user stays, the more engrossed he or she is with the content, and the higher probability that he or she will do business with you. Recent studies have shown that Facebook is the stickiest website in the world. That makes sense, and so will the value of the stock once it goes public.