In today’s world where the web is the heart of your business you must have a means to evaluate the metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPI)   that impact customer experience, regulatory compliance, brand awareness and marketing effectiveness.  Let’s face it, how many times have you visited a site and found a broken link?  In addition to this you must be able to compare your web quality and performance versus the websites of your competitors. The days of a simple brochure-ware site that is put together quickly and maintained easily is history.   Successful enterprises must have a comprehensive web presence consisting of:

• Many growing interlinked sites covering individual countries, markets, products or audiences.
• A reliance on 3rd parties in design, deployment, content creation, feeds, hosting, linking, etc.
• A complex technical environment. RSS, Blogs, Flash, payment systems, personalization etc.
• Ever-rising user expectation, fueled by small entrants and heavy hitters.

Companies are spending millions of dollars, building, delivering and managing…and then promoting their web presence.  This is the key battleground in the fight for market share.   Yet we all have visited websites, experienced difficulties and been frustrated by poor quality.   In general, we leave these sites for a competitor that is a click away.  This affects sales, investors, media—everyone!There is no longer a place for an online presence that falls short of customer expectations.  Everyday we see sites that fail web standards, fail legal requirements, and expose the business to reputational risk.  A poor quality sites costs sales, undermines brand value and reduces investor confidence.

Why do websites fall short?

• Lack of clearly defined and reportable standards
• Reliance on 3rd party content and services
• Failure to thoroughly test
• “Glitz” spending instead of core investment

How do you solve this problem?  You must develop a specific plan, based on the quality, performance, and compliance (web, brand, corporate and regulatory) standards you have set and then prioritize the corrective action required.  A good plan or service can help you identify the problem in detail right down to the line of code.

The benefits of doing this are enormous.

• Reduced delivery lead times, so you can come to the market faster
• Reduced maintenance time and cost so you are more flexible and efficient
• Improved website perform\ance and lower site infrastructure costs from better code
• Improved platform security and control of content.

The bottom line is improved user experience from using consistent user-oriented standards and reduced legal risk due to compliance failings.  This means happier customers and more money in your company coffers.