Any serious shop owner will know: how many people enter the shop; the conversion rate; the minimum number of shoppers needed to break even; which promotions worked; which promotions tanked; what the competition is doing; and, when more staff need to be hired for busy times.
Whether you sell jeans, make jewellery, design offices or coach executives, your website is your virtual shop front. Just like a real shop front or office it must be properly managed, maintained and regularly evaluated.
Here are ten questions about your website (and email marketing) that are critical to your online success:
- How many people visit your website every month/week/day?
- How do they find your website? (if they came from a search engine, what keywords did they search for?)
- Why are they visiting?
- Which visitors are converting the best (and/or staying the longest) and why?
- When was the last time you updated the website?
- If your web designer disappears tomorrow (it happens!) do you have up-to-date Control Panel, FTP, Domain Name Management and Content Management System access details so that you can hand it over to a new web designer?
- How many people downloaded your ebook and/or signed up to your newsletter/articles last week?
- When you send out an email campaign, what is your average open rate? Which topics and subject lines produce the best open rates?
- For what keywords has your website been optimised? (Are you using these when writing new content?)
- How does your website compare against your competitors’? What are they doing that you can learn from?
Most business owners and managers with whom I talk can answer, at best, three of the above. Bail up your web designer or website manager and ensure that you have access to the necessary statistics. If in doubt, take me up on my free consultation offer.
Christmas is getting close! What is Santa bringing you?