Marcio Juarez — February 10, 2017 After months of design, development and content population your website is finally live and open for business, now what?
How do you know if your website is working? And when I say working, I mean not just how many new visits, social shares or even new leads you’re getting but I’m also talking about the conversion funnels, user patterns, feature requests, user journeys – among other measurements that determine if your website is working to its full potential.
The goal of your site first and foremost is to grow your organization; it has to help your business to achieve its targets and support all areas of your company.
Consequently, it’s important to regularly audit and track its performance.
The basics
The first step of a successful site is the audience. Does your site have a consistent and predictable flow of visitors?
There are many tools available to track site traffic, chances are that you might already have some kind of tracking on your site, but how often do you review it? Do you look at anything else other than just visits?
Google Analytics is used by 54.7% of all websites (source: W3Techs Surveys), and its conversions and goals reports will help you measure the progress of activities that contribute to the success of your business, so make sure they have been set correctly.
Additionally, the flow visualization report helps to visualise the users’ path through the site.
If you’re interested in learning Google Analytics in full depth, I suggest Google’s own Analytics Academy, where you can take lessons and test your knowledge in digital analytics for your business.
Value and Usability
Google Analytics will give you quantitative reports for your site; monthly visitors, the source of traffic, bounce rate, etc. but it is important to know how exactly are the users navigating your site? Are they finding that they need? Are they getting value in each page they visit?
Once again, there is an array of tools to choose from, but one of the simplest and easy to set-up is Hotjar. With Heatmaps, Recordings and Survey polls, even their free plan will give you an idea of how your site is performing and what can be improved.
The use of heatmaps will make you understand what your users want, care about and interact with on your site.
User testing and session recording will help you to identify usability issues.
Gather feedback – who is the best person to tell you what your user wants? The users themselves, so facilitate user feedback and contribution by adding polls or surveys on main sections of your site.
We use Growth Driven Design which is a way of developing websites based on a continuous process of analysis, testing and improving.
Keeping a close eye on your site means you will recognize the areas that need improving to optimize the user experience and business results for your company.
Download our guide to Growth Driven Design and get your website working smarter.
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