The old nursery rhyme that asks of Mistress Mary “how does your garden grow?” might ask the same question of you: “how does your website grow?”  A website is much like a garden.  It takes regular attention, pruning, weeding, and trial and error analysis to make it a success.  In the end you become a master gardener with the skills you need to succeed.  On a website, we are interested in similar methods to measure success:  how traffic is growing? how many “tomatoes” are picked? and what we can do to increase our yields?  How do you know if your website is successful?  What should you measure?  The answer is not a simple one.  What you measure depends on what you want to know.  For those of you who need a little nudge in the right direction, here are some things you can do to get started:

1.  Identify who has a stake in the success or failure of the website.

The success of your company’s website should not only be on the shoulders of the person who designs or manages it.  You need to know who in your company cares about and has a vested interest in its success.  If no one cares, then the battle is lost before it is even fought.  The people in your company who care about your site enough to complain about it should be on the team willing to take some responsibility for it.

2. Identify the goals of those who have a stake in the success or failure of the website.

Next, find out what the team members want.  This involves determining what they expect out of the website for the company, for their departments, and for themselves. This should be a group effort involving everyone who has a stake in the site’s success.  You’ll need to meet together and discuss a comprehensive list of objectives, goals, and aspirations.

3. Identify the most important visitors to your website.

The most important visitors will differ from site to site.  Some people will want to know visitors that return the most frequently, stay the longest, view the most web pages, buy the most product, or spend the most money.  Almost everyone will agree that that the most important visitor is the one who is profitable.  But your definition of “profitable” may vary, depending on what you are trying to accomplish.  If you do not sell anything, for instance, but you want visitors to download a certain file, then your most important visitor will be different than those who are trying to sell a product.

4. Identify the goals of your website’s visitors.

What are your visitors trying to accomplish on your site?   What do they expect from your site?  This may or may not match your own company’s goals.  All visitors should expect a positive user experience — a website that is easy to use and reasonably fast.  Nothing will turn away users faster than a slow or complicated website.  If your visitors are trying to purchase something, is your site making it easy to accomplish?  Are you losing customers during the buying/signup process?  Tools like nextSTAT or WebSTAT can help you answer such questions.

5. Prioritize your team’s goals.

Now that you know what everyone wants you can start discussing the priority of everyone’s goals.  While not everyone may be pleased with the outcome, you will at least get everyone with a stake in the site involved in identifying, discussing, and hammering out a priority list.  That way everyone will understand why things are being done the way they are and where their “pet goal” fits in the grand scheme.  Some of these goals will be compatible with others, while others will not.  For example, what is more important, increasing revenue or improving customer satisfaction?  You may have to temporarily give up one to work on another.

6. Identify the most important metrics.

Now that the hard part is completed, you will need to identify which metrics can help you measure what you are trying to accomplish.  Services like nextSTAT or WebSTAT have a whole array of tools that can be used to evaluate the success of your goals.  Are you trying to increase traffic? visitors? clickthroughs? downloads? sales?  conversions?  Perhaps your goal involves several different metrics.  Involve your team in identifying the methods you think should be used to measure what you are trying to accomplish.

7. Identify the web analytics partners that have the technology to help you measure your goals.

Does your current web analytics partner have the capability of measuring what you are trying to measure?  If you are trying to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising as it relates to sales, for example, you will want an analytics package that will allow you to track both your advertising expenditures and sales revenues to help you assess whether your advertising is working or not.  A simple “web counter” type service is not going to be of much assistance at this level of analysis.

8. Use web analytics reports judiciously.

Too much data can be overwhelming and therefore unhelpful.  Determine the reports that speak to the goals you are trying to accomplish and only distribute those reports to your team of stakeholders.  It is certainly helpful if your web analytics provider has flexible reports or filtering capabilities that can help tailor your reports to your needs.

9. Make website changes incrementally.

A major site redesign can be disruptive to the measuring process.  All too often web designers make major changes to a website without thinking about how the changes might affect the headway you are making in measuring certain goals.  The more changes made all at once, the more difficult it is to determine cause and effect.  If, for example, you decide to replace your entire site with a fancy new one and find that traffic and sales decrease, how will you know exactly what caused the decline?  Don’t be afraid to make small tweaks and then wait for a time to see if they are working. 

10.  How does your garden grow?

You have a team, and know your goals.  You have the tools to measure your progress, and pretty reports to show team members.  Make sure that you use this information as part of a process of continual improvement.  The whole reason for this exercise is to help you measure your web site’s success.  Don’t let your garden get out of control.  Keep pruning, weeding, and measuring your yields.  You’ll find that before long you will be a master gardener with a healthy, thriving website.