Measuring Website Success

Online presences constitute a continuum from a static brochure ware website that simply takes basic company information online to the highly sophisticated and dynamic enterprise portal which ingrates all processes of a business.

Wherever the web presence in question may be located within this continuum, as long as the web is used as a customer facing channel to generate sales and revenue there are four basic criteria that can be applied to determine the success of a website. These four criteria form a logical sequence and have to be addressed in the right order.

1.) Visibility -  Visibility measures if a website can be found on the Internet. This is the basic challenge of how to get a site to the top of the list. While there is a plethora of online marketing tactics available today, three popular methods include

- Paid inclusion - a marketing model in which website operators pay a search engine company a fee to guarantee their site will show up in search results.
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising - website operators bid over keywords to show as sponsored results in major search engines. Payment is not made for the impression but for a click.
- Search engine optimization (SEO) - sometimes also referred to as ‘organic search’ because untainted from economic influence - is the application of strategies intended to position a website at the top of major search engines. This method takes a lot of expertise and usually patience as well.

Visibility can be tracked by looking at how a website ranks for the main keywords in major search engines. There are automated tools to complete this rather cumbersome task.

2.) Traffic - the basic traffic indicator are hits, visits or sessions, unique visitors and page views. Generally speaking - the more traffic the better, but it is also important that traffic is qualified and targeted, i.e. that really potential customers browse a website.

3.) Conversions - this indeed is the ‘blind eye’ of many online marketers. While traffic alone does not generate any income it is conversions that generate money, may it be the potential customer buying something online, a viewer clicking an advertisement etc. Conversions relate to a site’s ’stickiness’ and general usability and quality. Expert online marketers will aim at both increasing traffic in the first place and working towards a higher conversion rate as well.

4.) Return on Investment - the rate of return on investment refers to the profit relative to the cost of the initial investment. Calculating the ROI is not an easy task in the online world. It is a good idea for Internet entrepreneurs to work with timesheets and to bill hourly rates to projects as time will usually be the bigger investment that money. It is the logic of the Internet that work almost seems in vain in the beginning until a critical point is being reached when websites produce returns with minimal time input.

It is the nature of these measurements for online success that visibility, traffic and conversions have to be in place before any returns will show.