What's your website trying to tell you?
More and more organisations are turning to their websites right now. As the importance of marketing becomes ever more critical, websites are often a relatively cost-effective way of increasing profile and presence and building relationships with existing customers.
The question is, at a time when budgets are often at a premium, on what basis are decisions being made?
We all know web analytics and online measurement is much more sophisticated than it used to be. We’ve come a long way. But can you, hand on heart, say you’re really making the most of all that valuable customer and campaign information at your disposal?
A recent study of 70,000 SME websites, carried out by BT, revealed that the majority of small businesses are not using their websites effectively enough to attract new customers. Only one in six have e-commerce facilities, while just 11% regularly maintain their sites. Just one in more than 3,000 are using keywords in the content they post on their sites - despite the use of keywords increasing the chances of search engines picking up web pages.
If you put your website on the couch and made some time to listen to it, what would it tell you? What secrets would it reveal? And would it make for comfortable listening, or would there be a few home truths that need to be aired?
Web analytics is the study of the behaviour of website visitors. More specifically in a commercial context sense it refers to the use of data collected from a website to determine which aspects work best towards business objectives – or in short, how hard your website is actually working for you.
Depending on what your website offers visitors, it’s likely to be making a contribution to many different areas of your business – from sales and marketing to customer support, from community relations to recruitment. No-one questions the importance of spending time with people in these roles to ensure they’re equipped and trained, but how often is the website overlooked and left to its own devices in a way that you would never consider leaving your staff unattended?
The starting point is normally web traffic reports, collected from your web server, but to this can also be added email response rates, direct mail campaign statistics, sales and lead information and user performance data.
Look no further than Google Analytics if you want a powerful, but free, means of gathering and reviewing information. How long it stays a free tool remains to be seen, but while it is, Google Analytics (or a similar tool) should be a key component of your marketing strategy.
It puts your website on the couch and it lets you talk together freely and easily, starting off on the surface, but quickly digging deeper and deeper.
Which pages are proving most popular? How long are visitors spending on your site? Are key pages easy to find or buried beneath the mother of all crumb trails? Are people coming back to the site regularly? Which search phrases are generating the highest level of visits?
Too many organisations still fail to see their website as a living, (almost) breathing entity that needs constant care and attention. There’s no excuse for the ‘it’s up now and that’s all that matters’ approach. Your site can tell you plenty, if you know how to listen and make the time.
There seems to be a general dusting down of many websites at the moment, they’re being more carefully interrogated and rightly so.
Of course, how this information is interpreted will depend on what you’re expecting from your site. There will be a world a difference between a corporate communications driven site and an ecommerce site.
So, before you plump up the cushions and make your site comfortable on the couch, take some time to understand it, be clear about what it’s there for, what you’ve asked it to do and what it really should be doing. It’s only fair at the end of the day and it means you’ll be much better placed to understand what it tells you and respond appropriately.
You don’t have to be an expert. The sheer wealth of information available can be overwhelming, but if you focus on some of the key headlines to start with, you can make progress together.
The more you build your knowledge and understanding and the more you evolve the structure, content and functionality of your website, the harder your website will work for you.
Despite what some people might try to tell you. It’s not rocket science, just good principles of communication.