FireStarter: Measuring success of your website

Measuring success of your website

Web strategy - setting the broad goals

Why create a strategy?

This focus of this series is not about how to develop a web strategy - that's a whole book in itself. But you need to recognise that a web strategy itself should set measurable targets.

Before I start I should say that I'm working from the perspective that your web strategy is part of your marketing and sales strategy, with the goal of increasing sales (and increasing sales right now), is not always the case. In some cases the web strategy is not sales-driven at all. There is still a process associated with the web site, its just that it may be harder to analyse directly with web statistics.

In particular, whilst web statistics can provide some insight for websites "Community" objectives, qualitative measures such as surveys, focus groups, and interviews may often provide a more informative measure of success. "Branding" goals also have to use more qualitative measures, as the goals are often about changing the perception of your clients and markets. Whatever the strategy, don't let any marketer kid you that you can't measure the impact of your website, within the marketing strategy.

If we keep it really simple the web strategy should be aimed at giving you measurable targets in two key areas:
1. Getting qualified visitors to your website [marketing].
2. Getting those visitors to undertake particular actions [conversion] leading to the main goals.

For the majority of you, the main goal of your web strategy will be: Increase Sales. And to measure the success of the strategy as you implement, you use the traditional paradigm of the marketing campaign and the sales pipeline.

Marketing campaigns

Your web strategy needs to set measurable targets for "qualified visitors", and set out the marketing campaigns for attaining those targets.

Remember the goal here is not raw visitor numbers. The goal is to attain qualified visitors that are potential clients.

The first thing you need to do is work out where the website fits into your general marketing plan. Your marketing plan may include a mix of marketing; from traditional marketing (e.g. direct mail, radio, press, television, billboards), guerrilla marketing (e.g. product placement, grass roots, giveaways), and new media marketing (search engine marketing, pay per click etc).

Whatever your mix we recommend that your website form a central part of your marketing campaigns creating a feedback loop on the site to gain information on those responding to your campaign.

We talk more about how to measure your marketing campaigns in a later article.

Sales steps

We think of that process as a virtuous path, in which your website visitors are encouraged into an ever increasing relationship with you.

Sometimes not all of the steps occur on the web. If someone hears about your business at a convention, or via a tele-marketing campaign, then the first point at which they come in contact with your message (touchpoint) will not be web-based. However if the customer comes via an affiliate program or a search engine then the touchpoint will be web-based. And at the other end of the pipeline, many businesses do not sell online, so the web-based section of the sales process may end at the once the person calls or emails the business (opportunity).

Defining the steps

So what are the steps in your sales process?

Since Increasing Sales is the result of a sales pipeline, the web strategy needs to set measurable results for each step in the sales process. In sales speak, taking a customer through the sales steps, which are defined actions. In sales-speak we are making a conversion.

Every business is different, so the conversion steps vary between businesses.

So rather be instructive lets look at some example:

Online retailer

Touchpoint - in this example, the main marketing method, is Pay Per Click, so visitors are coming in contact with the business mainly via clicking on results in search engines.

Landing page - every smart PPC campaign directs clicks to a landing page specific to that campaign and keyword set.

Browse or Search - assume the client is impressed with the landing page they then move into the Shopping area to browse or Search for products they are looking for.

Cart - if they find stuff they like and want to buy it now they will add it to the cart.

Proceed to checkout - customer commences the checkout process

Final payment - Bingo the sales is done!

Alternatives conversions - these are other possible "wins" that have not resulted in a sale, but still start you on the path to a relationship with the customer:

Customer telephones to make the purchase
Customer makes an email enquiry
Customer joins a mailing list or member area
Customer spends a long time on the site, reading FAQs, product descriptions (will they come back later?)

Note how we broke the Sales process into 3 section Cart, Checkout, Payment. That's because the sale is so often lost at the last minute, because of usability or trust issues. For more in-depth analysis we would look even deeper to determine the EXACT page in the checkout process where customers "bail out".

Look for other measurements of success in the website; the alternative conversions.

Services company (no online sales)

Touchpoint - in this example, the main marketing methods are seminars, networking and natural search results in Google.

Home page or Download Page - every smart marketing campaign directs clicks to a landing page specific to that campaign, so if they conduct a seminar and offer "free stuff" they direct the attendees to a particular download page with a tailored message.

Browse or Search - assume the client is impressed with the home page they then move into more details about the services on offers. This might involve FAQs, Service description pages, Testimonials.

Call, Email, or Enquiry - if they find stuff they like they will call you, email or complete enquiry form.