It is easy to fall into the “build it and they will come” mentality when it comes to launching a new website. Companies spends tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands on a new website and then ask themselves “so what happens now.”

One of the first questions we ask our new clients is: “What is the goal of the site.” Followed-up by “Who are the audiences for the site.” Typically, I will get vague answers. Once these questions have been answered with all of the applicable sales and marketing strategy questions the site is built. It is also critical to have a strategy on how you are going to promote the new website. We will leave this for another discussion. So, we first need to capture stats from our website.

I am consistently amazed at massive corporations that have absolutely no grasp of basic website stats on their website.

Some of the basic stats include:
1) Visits
2) % New Visits
3) Page views
4) Page views per visit
5) Bounce rate
6) Average time on site

These stats need to be measured vs. benchmarks. The benchmarks can be historical vs. your previous company website stats and/or vs. other websites. Needless to say, if you have a new website with no historical benchmarks you can compare to other websites. You can even compare to other websites within your industry.

Capturing these statistics for your website is not complicated. Some html code simply needs to be added to each page of your website and you can track easily through a service like “Google Analytics.”

Once you have these stats you can make modifications to the site to help achieve your website goals. Without this data you will waste time and money playing the guessing game.

If you would like more information on website statistics please contact us at 800.287.7198.

All the best,

Dave