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Q. How do you review the success of your site, which approaches do you use?

Michael Welch, Blackcircles.com:

 As far as I’m concerned, if you don’t include web 

analytics in your marketing plan, then quite simply, you don’t have a marketing plan.

Gone are the days when all website owners ever worried about was visitor  numbers –  

good riddance too as it means we don’t have to put up with those horrible ‘visitor 

counters’ that you used to see bandied about everywhere.

Understanding not just how many visitors you have, but also how they are using 

your site is invaluable. We actively check out this information on a regular basis. A 

quick example would be: what percentage of our visitors search for tyres? From this, 

what percentage then adds a set of tyres to their basket and then how many actually 

end up on the payment confirmation page?

Looking at these stats we can see at what point in an order process people exit our 

site. Then we ask ourselves what content is on each page, are there enough calls to 

actions? Is there enough information? Is it easy to navigate? Could we add in new con‑

tent to encourage people to buy? If we come up with a potential change that we believe 

will help a page perform better, we then track to see the difference. If conversions go 

up, great – but how can we improve it further? If they drop – back to the drawing board.

Not only do we see the importance on an ‘order process’‑based analysis, but also 

using it for certain technical aspects. For instance, customers with one browser end 

up buying in greater percentages than those with a different browser. OK, so is there 

a piece of code on a page that is affecting the customers’ experience? Or is it even a 

demographic thing?

All this is just scratching the surface. Web analytics can answer so many questions 

you didn’t even know you needed to ask. The trick is not getting overawed – it is too 

easy to get lost in an ocean of statistics.