(Originally published in July 2010 while writing for Xspond.)
What would Mrs. Miller say if she saw most of us today? Would she be sorely disappointed that we have all abandoned the process? Would she grab us by the ear and walk us to the front of the class making an example out of us?
I don’t know about you, but nightmares of that embarrassment keeps me on the straight and narrow in regards to doing my best and double checking it when I am done. In business the best way to begin checking your work is through Google Analytics and Webmasters Tools.
Just one scenario of analytics saving a website; we redesigned an entire dealership homepage 10 days after we launched it, for a seemingly insignificant design choice. By watching where people clicked we found that from their perspective it was not clear that the Used Car link was indeed a link. By adjusting that feature we were able to get users to the used cars inventory as quickly as possible. Check your work, check it often, and fix it if it isn’t working. Here’s a small clip [of Mitch] from an Analytics discussion we had at Insights Group the other day.
Do you know how many leads your site generates, do you know how much traffic your site gets and where they are coming from, do you know how many people get to your site and bounce right out, do you know where you rank in a search engine, do you know if your site is optimized for google keyword searches, do you know if people are finding what they came to your website for?
If the answer is no, we recommend you call your web provider and have a discussion about your Google Analytics and Web Masters Tools. You will want to watch your analytics regularly, and look for areas of improvement.