A good website is essential for a business – it gives you legitimacy online, and can help customers get connected with your company. But how can you tell whether your website is good or not? Collecting data helps you discover a few key elements that can help you decide.
1. Is your site easy to find?
A website that is easy to find has a well-thought set up for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) making it easy for people to come to the site from an online search. (Learn more about that here!)
2. Is your site easy to navigate?
It also should be easy to navigate. That is, without too much work or frustration, a customer should be able to find the essential details about your company by browsing your site. That includes things like hours of operation, location, what you offer, and how to get in contact with you.
3. Are people moving through to the “sale point” on your site?
Lastly, you should know if people are purchasing from you or if they’re leaving your site before they get to the point of sale. A good website is designed in a way that makes it easy for customers to engage with your company and purchase your products.
That last point is one of the most essential ways to identify the effectiveness of your site, but the information can be hard to find. That’s where analytics comes in. Website analytic tools like Google Analytics and Stats and Insights on WordPress among others can give you a good picture of how your site is performing and how users are experiencing your site. Some major areas that your marketing team may be interested in are: how people find your site, where they go on your site, and where they exit.
Finding your Site
An analytics tool is useful for determining where people are accessing your site geographically, as well as what page brought them in. Do more people in the Eastern US visit than in the western states? Are locals viewing your site or are tourists checking you out before they visit your area? Do people find you with a common search term in Google search? Or are they coming from your Facebook post about the best blog you’ve ever written?
Knowing how people are finding your page, and where they start their browsing journey can help you determine your focus area in marketing. For example, if you determine that a large number of customers are coming from a certain part of town, you may want to target that area in your next ad set. Or, if people see your site because of your incredible blogs, you may want to start writing more blogs and posting them more frequently.
Browsing your Site
Once users access your site, some analytics tools allow you to see how users navigate through it. This allows you to answer some questions about how your site is set up and your marketing effectiveness. For example, after they see your home page, what page do most users click on next? Are your customers more interested in the services you offer or in your testimonial page? How many people who start on your blog go on to fill out a contact form? Finding these trends on your website will allow your team to determine the best next step for marketing your business or updating your website.
Leaving your Site
The last data point a user will leave for you is their exit point. When a customer clicks out of your site, the page that they exited can tell you a few things. If you see a lot of people exiting from a specific blog post, maybe there is some language that is turning people away from your business, which you need to update. If you’re noticing that a lot of people exit rather than contacting you once they view your pricing, that could indicate that your price structure could use an update. If people are bailing before your home page loads, you may have an issue with load time and you might need to update your picture sizes. While this data point is not a sure-fire way to get into the psychology of your website users, it can help to complete a picture of the demographics of people who are interested in your business.
The first step to an effective online presence starts with a good website, and from there, knowing how to interpret the data your website gathers can make a big difference to the way your company pivots with marketing and business decisions. At TwinRose Services, we aim to help our customers have the best online presence they can to represent their business well. We are able to effectively implement analytics tools for customers’ websites so they are informed about what their business should do moving forward.
If you need a new website, or if you need help with interpreting the analytics data you’re seeing on your site, contact us today. We’d love to help!
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