Have You Got Your Ear To The Ground Or Your Head I

Have You Got Your Ear To The Ground Or Your Head In The Sand?

by: Mike Cheney

What happened on your website yesterday? What about last week or last month? How about in the past hour? How many visitors come to your website as a result of using a search engine? How long do people stay on your website for on average? Which pages do your visitors go to?

If you don’t know the answer to some or all of these questions you are effectively operating a website blind.

This is like riding a bike blindfolded and expecting to arrive at the right destination. Itกs impossible and the likelihood is that you will crash, wreck the bike, lose pride and get left behind.

If you don’t know whatกs happening with your website or how people are using it and how they are finding it how can you hope to ever improve the site? Sure you can rely on secondguessing or asking the opinion of a handful of people but thatกs hardly going to give you accurate information on which to base a decision is it?

กMike I know what you’re saying. Itกs true that I need to track whatกs happening but I don’t have the Xก

X = Money?

X = Time?

X = Knowledge of where to start?

X = Need, as I already do this?

If you answered กMoneyก this would seem to be a valid reason but you can get your hands on the basic information about how your site is performing for nothing (ask your developer or web hosting company for starters and theyกll be able to point you in the right direction or check out the resources below)

If you answered ‘timeก Iกm sorry but if thatกs the case why do you even have a website if you don’t have the time to measure how itกs performing? Would you behave the same way with your business? Thought not..

If you answered กKnowledge of where to startก then this is fair enough. To get started try these resources that will help you:

http://www.cryer.co.uk/resources/websitetracking.htm

http://www.netiq.com/webtrends/default.asp

http://www.statcounter.com/

If you answered กI don’t have the need, as I already do thisก congratulations you get a weekกs free pass to the Smug Club. But seriously though you might already get all the statistics about how your website is performing but do you spend time viewing them, interpreting them and most importantly USING them? When was the last time you used the statistics about your websiteกs performance to implement a change on your site and then track the results on subsequent statistics to see what effect it had? Itกs all gone quiet in the Smug corner…

Feeling uncomfortable with all these questions yet? You should be. If you’re not happy with your website you need to dig a little deeper and ask what it is exactly that you’re not happy with. Did you set definite, timelinked and realistic expectations for the websiteกs performance prior to starting out? If you’re not getting the leads or sales you had hoped for you need to work out why this is the case scratching your head won’t do it. Tracking the performance of your site and viewing detailed statistics on how people use it won’t give you definitive answers either but it will propel you several miles in the right direction.

You are the doctor and your website is the patient you need to connect it to an ECG and start monitoring and recording everything. How else can you work out how to make the patient better? Or maybe you have the perfect patient who doesn’t actually have anything wrong with them?

Mike Cheney

www.magnet4web.com

About The Author

You can get free access to lots more articles that will help you to improve your websiteกs performance plus a Free Bonus Special Report กHow To Turn Your Website Into A Customer Magnetก worth a value of £47 ($85) here: http://www.magnet4web.com/website_services/?page=freeguide

This article was posted on August 07, 2004

by Mike Cheney