Tracking, tracking and more tracking. We ask all potential clients... How’s your website doing? 99% of them have no clue. They only know when they are getting customers and when they are not.
WARNING: If you are not a fan of sarcasm or fun, exit this page immediately.
Tracking, tracking and more tracking.
We ask all potential clients...
How’s your website doing?
99% of them have no clue.
They only know when they are getting customers and when they are not.
When they are not, they start to panic.
Your website is an ASSET.
If you can’t track how well it’s performing and how it’s helping you grow your business, you might as well not have one.
Let’s go through 3 keys for tracking web traffic on your website. If you’re not doing this, then we’re sorry to tell you but your website S.U.C.K.S.
To track how well your website is doing, you must install tracking scripts. There are a number of them out there but the most well known one is...
*DRUM ROLL PLEASE*
GOOGLE!
You guessed it (or maybe you didn’t).
Either way, it’s the easiest way to track how well your website is doing.
And it’s FREE!
That’s some out of this world s**t right there.
Not really but you get what we’re saying.
With this you’ll be able to track all sorts of crazy things like:
- How many people visited your website?
- How long did they stay on your website?
- What pages did they visit?
- Did they call your business?
- Did they submit a lead form?
- How did they find your website? (e.g. google, social media, etc.)
- How fast it loads on desktop or mobile
And more!
These are key metrics to understand how well your website is performing.
The more data you collect, the better decisions you will be able to make when it comes to updating your website to make it work better for you!
A website is never perfect when you first launch it.
It takes data to assess what works and what doesn’t, so you can tweak it as you go along.
Now that you’ve set up tracking on your website, you need to set up goals.
Can we get a definition?
Goal - g / ōl/
plural noun: goals
“The object of a person's ambition or effort; an aim or desired result.”
That’s spelled:
G.
O.
A.
L.
S.
GOALS
For example, if you would like to know how many phone calls or form submissions you are getting per month, you have to set it up to be tracked.
Then on a monthly basis you will be able to view how many you received and ask yourself: What’s the ratio of phone calls or form submissions based on the number of monthly visitors?
With that you can then make strategic marketing decisions like...
“Hey, if we are getting 50% phone calls on all website traffic then, all we have to do is spend money on advertising to drive more traffic to our website to get MORE phone calls. This will lead to MORE business”
It’s magic!
Sike.
It’s cold, hard data.
Data allows you to make strategic business or marketing decisions.
Now, there are some other factors that need to be considered but this helps you get the jist of it.
Now that you have tracking with goals and are reviewing them monthly or quarterly.
You have to update your website based on the data you are seeing and make business or marketing decisions off of it.
There’s no point in tracking how well your website is performing if you are not going to do anything about it.
We like to say websites are a living and breathing organism.
It should be constantly evolving.
If it’s not, it’ll grow old, won’t serve your business anymore and eventually go extinct like the dinosaurs...
Who still has a website from the early 2000s?
Hahaha!
For example, if you notice that the majority of people visiting your website are leaving after 10-20 seconds, then...
Maybe they are not finding what they need...
Maybe your message is unclear and they decide to go elsewhere...
Maybe your website loads too slow and they got tired of waiting...
Maybe your website is just plain UGLY...
Do we need another definition here? Maybe not.
(Yes, website “prettiness” plays a factor. Especially with younger generations.)
There could be a variety of scenarios but those are just a few.
It needs to be assessed and updated accordingly.
That’s what we ensure for all of our clients at Open Design.
The 3 keys above and a few other magic tricks up our sleeve to make sure your website serves your business.
That’s all folks!
Stay tuned for the next post in our series, Does Your Website Suck? Bad Design
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Interested in learning more about how we can help you build your custom website? Visit our contact us page and fill out the form to get started!
