Time For A Site Tune-up

So, I took my car into the shop for its regular six-month tune-up the other day, and as I was sitting there, waiting for the mechanics to do their job, a thought suddenly struck me:

How many online business owners regularly check under the hood of their web site to make sure it’s running smoothly?

And even if you do perform frequent check-ups on your site, are you sure you’re giving it a really thorough once-over? Because just like you can’t tell whether a car is roadworthy by kicking its tires, you can’t tell if your business is operating at peak performance just by giving your web stats a cursory glance.

About once a month, you should "pop the hood" of your web site and perform a comprehensive check-up. Here’s what you should be looking for:

Traffic stats: Your web host should provide basic stats, but you might also consider joining the free Google Analytics program, or using the services of a fee-based web analytics company.

You need to be checking your traffic stats constantly, so you can answer the following questions and get a clear picture of how your visitors travel through your web site:

What pages do your visitors leave your web site from? For example, do they abandon your site from the order page without placing an order? If so, maybe there’s a problem with your checkout process.

• How long do your visitors spend on your site, and on each individual page? If, say, they enter your homepage and then leave almost immediately, you’re obviously not grabbing their attention.
• How do your visitors find you? Are there any particular sites sending lots of traffic your way? If so, can you capitalize on this by partnering with them in some way? Do your visitors mostly come from one particular search engine? What might be the reason for this — and how can you snag traffic from the other search engines?
• Where do your visitors live? If there’s a lot of interest from a particular location, can you tweak your web site to cater specifically to these people (e.g., by offering services in their language, if it’s not English)?
• What search terms and keywords result in the most traffic to your site? Can you place more of these — or other similar keywords — in your content to attract even MORE traffic?

You should also look for traffic spikes and try to work out where these visitors are coming from. Is there a new link pointing to your site? Did you send an email campaign out recently? Could there be a seasonal reason? Maybe there’s a way to turn these spikes into regular occurrences.

Sales stats: As with your traffic stats, you should always keep track of your conversion rates — the percentage of your visitors who actually convert into paying customers!

Your sales will vary according to how and where you market your business online. Only by monitoring your traffic and your sales will you get a feel for which strategies are working for you, and which ones need improvement.

Email response stats: Always check your traffic and sales stats carefully after each email you send out. At the very least, maintain a simple spreadsheet that includes the number of people you emailed, the traffic you received in the days after you mailed it, and the number of sales you made.

Then you can find out which times of day, week, and year are best for your mailouts, and which subject lines and promotional offers work best for you.

General "housekeeping": Other checks you should regularly make on your web site include:

• Searching the Web for random phrases from pages on your site to make sure no one is using your content without your permission — it happens!
• Searching for keywords relevant to your industry to see whether or not your site turns up in the search engine results.
• Checking your competitors’ sites regularly to see if they’re running any special promotions or have any new products. And make sure you sign up for their opt-in newsletter if they have one! It’s a great way to keep tabs on them. (It’s a good idea to set up a "generic" email address with one of the free email service providers like Hotmail or Yahoo. This way, your competition won’t recognize you and exclude you from their mailings!)
• Checking for broken links and other technical faults on your site. Google Sitemaps can help with this. Another good resource for checking broken links and other factors that affect your site’s performance — such as your site’s loading speed — is www.sitereportcard.com.

An "accident" with your web site can be just as damaging to your business as a brake failure would be to your car. So, ideally you should set aside one day a month to undertake a major site review like this.

It’ll keep your business running as smoothly as a well-oiled engine!