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Assessing Your Website's Performance

by Kimberlie Clare-Campbell

Once your website has been developed and is live on the internet it is important to discover if it is working for you.

There are several ways you can do this.

• Simply ask your customers how they found out about your business.
  • It is advisable to do this for all your marketing to see which works the best.
  
  
• Ask your customers how they felt finding what they were looking for on your site. Was your site easy to navigate or did they get lost? What did they like about your site, what didn't they like.
  • There are lots of survey tools you can use to survey your customers.
    • feedback emails
    • phone calls
    • online survey forms eg survey monkey, icontact.
  
  
• Check where your site appears in your keyword searches on search engines.
  • To discover your keywords think about the words your customer would think of first to find your products.
  • Your location is becoming an increasingly more important keyword to include in your website.
  
  
• Checking how fast your site loads.


• Review your site analytics to find out:
  • How visitors found your site.
  • What device your customer views your site from, ie PC, tablet, smart phone.
  • Where they are from.
  • What pages people visited.
  • How long they spent on each page.
  • What keywords they used in their search to find you.
  • What page they left your site on (bounce rate). And much more.
  
  
• What equipment does your customers use to look at your site, with this knowledge you can ensure your site can be viewed properly and easily.
  • PC/Mac
  • mobile device
  • smart phone

Once you have gathered this vital information you can use it to update and modify your website content and UI (user interface - navigation) to meet your customers' needs and increase your sales. Remember your website should be an up-to-date representation of your business. Keep your website current with new information and images and ensure that all your links work correctly. Also remember that search engines rank up-to-date or more recently/frequently updated websites above those that are only updated once per year!

Copyright © Kimberlie Clare-Campbell 2012

If you are planning a website or if you are reviewing your existing website you may also like to read these articles:

• Does Your Business Need a Website?
• Assessing the effectiveness of your website.
• SEO (search engine optimisation) what is it and tips on using it in your website.
• Creating postive first impressions with your website..
• Why some websites work and how to ensure your website is one of them.
• How to use Social Media to promote your business

All too hard? At Catalyst for Growth we make it easy for you to have a website that achieves your goals because we build websites that work. Click here to read more about our website design service.

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