How to Evaluate the Effectiveness of a Website

Does Your Company’s Website Score Well on KPIs?

There are two key performance indicators (KPI) for any website:

1. Is the website getting visitors that could become customers?
2. Is the website successful in driving leads and/or sales?

Obviously, if there are few or no visitors, there will also be no sales. So, the place to start in evaluating a website is with the visitor information available through Google Analytics. If you don’t have Google Analytics installed on the website, ask your web host to install it for you. There is no cost for the standard Google Analytics tool, but you will get lots of information.

Once you have a month or more of Google Analytics data, you will get a sense of how many visitors your website receives. It may be difficult to evaluate whether you could be getting more visitors. An SEO specialist like 1st Click Consulting has access to databases that track keyword search volume. Using that tool, we can help you evaluate whether you could be capturing more visitors with search engine optimization techniques.

But it is not just the volume of visitors that is important. It is perhaps even more important that a website is getting the right visitors. Once again, Google Analytics can help evaluate that. Analytics allows you to see at least some of the keyword phrases that are being used by visitors to your website. If the keyword phrases don’t seem especially relevant to your business, these visitors are unlikely to become customers. This is also an issue that 1st Click Consulting can help with.

Often, however, the problem is not with the type of visitors or the number of visitors. Sometimes it is the website itself that is not optimized to convert visitors into customers. Google Analytics can tell you whether visitors are remaining on the website long enough to view multiple pages of the site. If the website doesn’t have a pages/visit number of 2+, it may need work to improve conversion factors. This checklist will help you identify problem areas:

• Is the nature of the business and its specialties immediately apparent based upon a scan of any page of the website? Look at images, headlines, the logo and header. And, don’t just look at the Home page, because some visitors will enter the site on other pages. If you can’t get a general picture of the business in a few seconds, most of your visitors will leave in that amount of time.
• Is the website’s navigation helpful to visitors searching for specific information? Generic navigation tabs like “Services,” “Products,” and “About Us” are not very helpful to someone unfamiliar with a business.
• Does the website answer the kinds of questions a new customer or client would have? Could they easily find that information? Is there an FAQ page or a blog that includes advice/tips helpful to consumers or business clients? This is one way to reduce sales friction, which tends to be rather high within the online channel.
• Is there a call to action on the website? Is there an offer? Does the website tell visitors what step they need to take to get personalized assistance/information? I don’t mean does it have a form or a phone number listed. I mean, does the site say, “Call today!” “Request a Quote,” or “Make a Reservation?” Do you incentivize that kind of contact in some way? Or do you offer an incentive to buy that might attract an inquiry?
• Does the website compare favorably to competitors’ websites? Remember that a serious potential buyer will visit several websites and may respond to more than one of them. If competitors have websites that are more attractive, more informative, or that display a stronger brand message, call to action or offer, you may not be able to compete effectively.

For a complete evaluation of a company website and what could make it more effective, give 1st Click Consulting a call at 210-392-5649 or 720-341-6336.