Simply launching a website is a success in itself, but how do you know if it’s hitting the mark with your audience? It’s a crucial question to ask so you know that the time, effort and money you put into your investment is paying off.
The key is to set goals before you even begin on your website project, and then break those goals into measures of success. For instance, your goal may be to transmit your message to more teens. Ways you can measure the success of that goal might be:
- More registrations from people aged 13-18
- More website referrals from teen-centric partners or resources
- More repeat visits from people in the 13-18 age range.
It’s a good idea to quantify each of those bullets to match your audience share.
Just as each of your goals will be unique to you and your organization, so will the measurements of success. Generally speaking, though, here are some other ways you can tell if your website is doing what it should:
Increased traffic.
Sign up with an analytics account (I like Clicky and Google Analytics) and see if your traffic goes up.
Repeat visits.
Increased traffic isn’t the same as repeat traffic. You want people to find your site and keep coming back.
Increased sales or donation ratio.
Start counting how many visitors you need to make one sale or donation. If 1 in 100 visitors makes a purchase, your sales ratio is 1 percent. If you’re successful, this so-called conversion rate will increase.