The world is governed more by appearances than by realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it. -- Daniel Webster
Your business has cars that you check on each of them for safety before you assign it to be driven, right? You have made sure that it is fit to be on the road, that it is reliable to get from point A to point B and that the tyres are not worn out and the pressure is correct. There is oil and fuel in the tank and the registration is up to date and the seatbelts all operating as they should.
Your Website Vehicle
Well we talk about traffic online and this is the currency of business.
How much traffic is there? How much of that traffic converts to sales?
That's what keeps businesses going and that is the beginning and the end of what any business owner in any field should want to know about their business whether it is online or offline or hopefully, both.
So since we are talking traffic terminology it makes sense to think of the vehicle by which the traffic is generated.
It is clear that many businesses who have a website do not maintain them as they would their fleet of vehicles and since the website has the potential to bring in new business, this is rather hard to understand why it is so.
Let's just investigate how a business might undergo a Roadworthy test with this checklist. The answers to these questions, should be known without hesitation by the owner of the business. No exceptions.
So here's your pop quiz! Now these do not represent an in depth list of questions that you should be monitoring but it is a very quick and dirty method of seeing if your website needs a service.
Your Website Roadworthiness Checklist
How do you measure your traffic to the website?
What are the top keywords people are using in search that brings them to your business?
Do you have a conversion system for your website?
What description about your business is Google picking up?
How are you using local search for growing your share of sales in the local area?
What pages are most visited on your site?
What websites are linking to you?
Which external websites are sending you traffic?
What percentage of your business comes from web compared to offline sales?
What is the turnaround time for enquiries to your website?
What facility is on the website for people to buy from you today?
If you have a shopping cart system, what is the dropout rate for those shoppers who don't complete a purchase?
What are the key words for which you want your business to come up, when people search?
In what way are you incorporating social media with your website and offline to generate traffic?
You have a process for monitoring your reputation online so you know what is being said about you and the business online.
In Summary
If you don't know the answer to these questions, then you need to get the report on these from your employees to you right now.
If you can't manage to get the report to you in short time, then this indicates you have issues that go beyond the website that need to be reviewed too.
These are just some of the obvious things that a business owner needs to be managing in the business. There are many more that you should know especially if you are paying for adwords and the like as well as issues of a more technical nature that can and should be measured in addition to these. And it is a good idea to get these monitored by someone outside the business from time to time - at leaste once a year, to ensure that you are getting the best advice from those inside the business whose job it is to oversee your web presence.
There are many ways to tweak a website for better performance and some of these can be done very easily and quickly.
So how did you go?
Happy with the result you achieved on this test?
If you are less than happy and would like a review of the rest of your website contact me now and let's investigate before there is any more damage.
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