Why You Need Website Goals and Analytics

Written by: Rusty PilePresident and Director of Marketing

One of our specialties is online marketing. We set up and manage paid search engine marketing, pay-per-click programs and search engine optimization for companies who need more traffic. But when a client tells us they need more website traffic, the first thing we do is question it.

If you want your website to generate more business, bringing more people to the site might not be the answer. Not the first answer anyway. First you need to know if the site is performing properly. You need to know if the site is achieving its goals with the visitors it already has. The website might look nice, but if the site isn’t performing now, paying for more traffic won’t solve the problem. You need to repair any performance issues first, otherwise marketing the site will be a waste of money.

Before you can tell if your website is performing, you need to identify what “performing” means to you. In other words, you have to know what the goals of the website are before you can know if it’s achieving those goals. So what’s your site supposed to do? Is it supposed to sell spark plugs to auto repair shops through your online shopping cart? Is it also supposed to get people to call your 800 number? Is it supposed to make visitors want to learn more about a new high-performance plug your company manufactures? Does the site have sales funnels developed for each of these goals? If so, what are they? After you’ve identified your website goals, then you can use a website analytics program to see how well your site is performing.

Hopefully your website designer or IT department installed a good analytics program when your site was built. If not, shame on them. But don’t lose sleep over it. Install Google Analytics. It’s a good, free, and very popular system that’s easy and quick to install. Now give your site a month or two to gather some solid statistics. If you know how to analyze the statistics, the program will tell you all you need to know to modify your site for better performance. You’ll learn who’s visiting the site, what they were searching for when they arrived, if they followed your sales funnels, what they’re clicking on and not clicking on, the pages they visited, the page they left from, how long were they on the site, if they abandoned a shopping cart, how many completed the goals/conversions, etc.

After changes have been made, allow at least another month or so to pass before analyzing the results again. Only after your website is performing to expectations should you consider spending money to increase traffic.

Of course if you want help with this, you can always call the Avenue 25 web design and marketing department. It’s what we do.