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Title: Search Engine Strategies - How To Evaluate Website Performance
Category: Internet Marketing, Search Engine Strategies
Word Count: 686
Author: Nelson Tan
Email: tankiatwee@...
Keywords: search engine, internet marketing, website performance

Description: The importance of measuring how well your site converts for results
cannot be understated. Learn how to evaluate website performance and improve it.

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How To Evaluate Website Performance

by Nelson Tan

Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing campaign,
and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you
have defined your website goals. If you don't know what you want your site to
accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to
guide you in developing and monitoring your website, all your site will be is an
online announcement that you are in business.

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors
filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a
product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning
at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working
for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good
baseline measurement is a month in which you haven't been doing any unusual
offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not
mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do
something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to
your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate,
and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and
figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site
is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of
them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this
figure, take your number of buyers and divide that figure by the number of
visitors. Then multiply that result by 100 (25 × 100 ÷ 2000).

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then
figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your
sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will
actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a
service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site
conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you
make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if
you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective
methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a
search engine optimization campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing
your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages
faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve
your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to
do the work for you. In either case, after your have improved your search engine
positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting
of your efforts to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to
accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for
the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the
visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it's too difficult to
get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site.
Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering
page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of
course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website
copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and
paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference
between profit and loss in your online campaign.


Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth
of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at http://www.internetmasterycenter.com