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Ever Had 27,000 People In Your Parking Lot?
We would be surprised if you said yes. (Though we do have a few clients who could do so!) If you are like most business leaders you would probably answer no to this question. But, if you look at your public website as a front door to your organization this may be a realistic statement—most Spindustry Interactive clients get thousands of visitors each month.
When you start to think about your website handling real people—customers, prospective customers, employees—which it does, in quantities that would overflow your parking lot you will begin to understand the power of the web.
How Do I Know How Many?
Do you know how many visitors went to your website last month? What pages did they access most frequently? What search phrases they used to find you? Are you tracking offline and online efforts to know what initiatives are working to increase your business?
If you host your website with Spindustry Interactive, you have the ability to access web statistics through one of our analytical packages any time. Have you logged in to review your site’s traffic information? Web statistics for your public website can help you analyze what’s working and what may not be working on your site. These statistics can help you identify how to better manage your site for maximize usability—to keep all of those visitors engaged. You also want to make certain that your site offers “calls to action” so that visitors can connect with your organization. Interestingly, one of the key ways Spindustry Interactive has grown over the years is by encouraging site visitors to submit an inquiry to our team which we respond to quickly.
What Information Should I Look For?
First of all, forget the ever popular phrase “hits.” While the number of hits can sound great—it’s really not an accurate measure of site traffic. Why? Because one visitor can generate dozens if not hundreds of hits in a single visit. You see, hits are created as elements, such as pictures, load on a web page. The more elements, the more hits. What is important is the number of unique visitors your site gets each month. A unique visitor is generally defined as the first time a new visitor comes to your site. Without getting too technical, your website can tell if someone has visited before.
Here’s another important thing to remember—every page of your public site can be a home page! What? Yes. Because many visitors find you through search engines like Google (if your site has been well optimized for the search engines that is) they may land on any page of your site, not necessarily your home page. What this means is that your site’s navigational structure must be intuitive to allow visitors to find their way around your site—even if they land on a page three layers down.
What are Visitors Doing On My Site?
You should know how visitors are using your site—and how they generally go through your site. Typically your homepage will be the most visited page. Sometimes returning visitors will bookmark a page on your site they like or, as noted above, will find a particular page within your site from a search engine. You also want to know what path they took through your site—and what was the last page they visited before they left? Again, if the trend is that your users exit on the About Us page, your site has some structural or content issues that need to be addressed. If they’re leaving after completing an order or sending an inquiry, great! That’s what you want to see.
It’s All About the Search Engines—Google, Really
The search engines do all of the heavy lifting for you. They’ll look at your site and decide how your content is—how relevant it is—and then place you in the order they want to. By the way, they don’t really tell anyone how they analyze things but we have some top secret insight. If you work with our search engine team they’ll fill you in on some of the ways you can rise to the top. And when you are there you will have people find you that would otherwise never know your business. That’s the motherlode.
It’s Amazing.
OK, are you the kind of person who will tweak a brochure or ad over and over and over again? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. What’s interesting, though, is that many of those same people don’t pay much attention to their public website. When you consider the number of people that visit your site, you really should put down the brochure mockup and spend some time on your website. The impact is often much better! Besides, you can convert that brochure into a PDF and place it on your site! Tweak it and upload it as often as you like.
Now What?
No doubt, there is a lot that goes into a solid, well designed site. We’re happy to talk more—and in much greater detail. Once you have a better understanding of the who your web users are and how they want to interact with your organization you can really start to impact the relationships you have. The Spindustry Interactive team is happy to create a plan that works for you. We’ll review your goals, bring some fresh ideas to the table and blend it all with an eye towards ROI (getting more money back than you paid up front). Contact us on our website or give us a call. We’d love to build your organization a more effective web presence.
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