Website effectiveness tracking
How do you know if your website is paying for itself?
To determine the effectiveness of your website, you need to track the activity generated by it and measure it against the cost the create and maintain the website. Here are a few suggestions to consider.
Google Analytics
This one is a no-brainer. Every website should be connected to Google Analytics – a free reporting system that provides a ton of info about your website visitors – including how many, where they came from, how they found you and much more. You could spend a day drilling into the data that Google Analytics provides.
So, if you only care about website traffic, Google Anlytics can help determine your website’s ROI. However, if you’re like most businesses, you care more about selling a product or service. So, we need other ways to track and determine ROI.
Dedicated Website Phone Number and Email Address
Let’s assume that you sell a product or service. When someone calls or emails, how can we determine that they came to you via the website?
At the very least, you should establish a dedicated email address that is only used on your website (something like website@yourcompany.com). Then, each time you receive an email to this address, you know that the customer came through your website.
The same is true for phone numbers. Using a dedicated phone number helps track website activity. But, it might be tough to setup a dedicated phone number with your phone company or existing phone system. We need an easier option.
We often use and recommend a service called Grasshopper. This web-based service allows us to setup a dedicate toll-free and/or local phone number for your website, and automatically forwards incoming calls to your current phone number. The beauty of this solution is that it’s cheap (about $10/month), and provides detailed reporting on call activity.
Just Ask!
When I get a call from a new client, one of the first questions I ask is, “How did you find Forge3?” I then take note of their response and store it next to their other contact info. This “old fashioned” approach works just as well as the high-tech ways above – as long as you’re consistent about it.
Pulling It All Together – Determining ROI
Once you have the tracking pieces in place, the final step is to relate the website activity to the cost of the website.
For example, let’s assume that your website costs $10,000 to create, and that, on average, you receive 25 sales per month via the website totaling $2,500. Doing the math, you’ll break even during month four, and begin to make money in subsequent months.
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