It’s easy for the web designers to get caught up with the lingo of website design, so before we get too far into this, rest assured we’re not going to focus on the ‘technical’ mumbo jumbo of java script and metadata and how Ruby on Rails is so much better than PHP. No this is real-life, ‘non-geek’ stuff.
1) Traffic:
How many people come to your website? Why is this important? Well, when you evaluate the cost you’re spending on your website, or the amount of Google advertising you’re going to do or the amount of time you’re using Social Media Channels, it’s important to see your efforts making a difference to how many people hear about and come to your website. If you have a blog post about Subject A and then create a post about Subject B and there’s way more clicks and traffic for subject B, this could be a hint as to what subjects interest your audience.
2) Source:
Where did that traffic come from? Does most of your traffic come from Google Searches, from Social Media, from other websites, and which ones?
3) Mobile Ready:
This is a fun one, because while every website will show up on a mobile device, not every site has been created to adapt to a mobile screen. If someone shows up to your website and needs to zoom in to see the text, or has to move their screen back and forth on their mobile device in order to read the text, your site is not mobile ready. In 2014, Google predicts that mobile traffic will surpass desktop/laptop traffic. More people will be trying to view your website with a mobile device rather than a desktop or laptop. Is your site mobile ready?
4) Traffic Flow:
What pages are your visitors visiting and spending the most time on? If most of your traffic reads your first blog post and then leaves the site, or rarely visits your contact page, then there needs to be an adjustment to how that information is presented to them. If blog posts on twitter attract visitors who stay on your site for multiple pages, but visitors from facebook usually read the first page and leave, then you could adjust your focus accordingly.
5) Conversion Rate:
The number of visitors who take the desired action you hope a website visitor will take – who ‘convert’ from visitors to clients ie: sign up to your email newsletter, download a coupon to bring into your store, request a quote by your contact page, make an online purchase, etc. Conversion Rate is determined by the percentage of people who visited your site and took that desired action. If 100 people visit your site tomorrow and 2 people download your coupon, your conversion rate is 2% – There are many ways to try new approaches to increasing your conversion rate, but it starts with deciding what your desired conversion is.