Are You Taking Care Of Your Investment?

Do you look at your website as an investment? If not, it's time to start. Your website is not only a tool in your business, but it's a major sales force waiting to bring you in leads. The more efficient it operates, the more it will work for you. Take a look at these 7 tips, and see how your website stands up.

1. How many people visit? Do you track how many people visit your site? Do you know how well your site is doing today relative to one month ago? Or even one year ago? These numbers provide you with growth potential, and let you know how well you are doing with your online marketing. The numbers are important. Start tracking today to determine how to proceed with your marketing for the future.
2. How fast does it go? Look at every page of your site, and see how fast it loads. Does your home page load quickly? How about the supporting pages? How about the order page? Or the request more info page? People are more impatient now than ever. If something doesn't load properly in seconds, they back out or hit the button again. The faster you can make it go, the more responsive you'll be to your clients.
3. What happens with errors? Error pages make you look bad. They tell your potential customer that you don't have the time to test your website, and make sure it's fully operational. Do you have any 404 Not Found errors? These can easily be rerouted. How about bad links? Again, these should be monitored and corrected.
4. What do they like? Do you know what your customers like about your website? What pages do they spend the most amount of time on? If you think they are always coming in through your home page, think again. Many times people will enter on an internal page, and spend a vast majority of time within one section. They may never even get to your home page! The more you know, the more you can enhance.
5. Where did they go? One they enter your site, what path did they take? This is important for two reasons. First, it can show you what information is of interest to potential buyers. Something is capturing their attention, and if you concentrate on that, you can market to them even better. Second, where did they exit? If people always leave on a certain page, maybe its time to rewrite that page.
6. Are your visitors happy? Listening to your customers and prospects can quickly tell you if you're on the right path. Survey them either with online tools, or with a follow up phone call and determine how well they liked your site.
7. Did you meet your goals? Do you have clearly defined goals for your site? Did your site bring in more leads, customers, sign ups, etc? The only way to improve on your site is to have clearly defined goals, and the ability to track in a way that will tell you when you reach your goals.

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