As we’ve discussed in a previous blog, you can’t treat your website like an appliance that you buy once and then forget about. You need to be constantly evaluating it and improving it to be successful. To help you do that, we’ve put together a checklist for a quarterly review of your website. It should give you a good idea of what you need to do keep your site vital and effective.
Function
Most people get a website for their business without ever considering exactly what they want the website to do. Don’t fall into that trap. Websites can create leads, make sales, be a customer service tool, educate your target audience and create a community for your brand. Websites should be more than online brochures. You can use a real brochure for your brochure. Before judging your site’s function, identify exactly what it is you want it to do for you.
1. Conversion Rate
The amount of people who convert (i.e. do what you want them to do) divided by the amount of people who visit your site. It will show you how effective your site is once people get find it. (For more information, see our previous post on simple website metrics).
2. Cost per Conversion
Take the total cost to run your website for a month and divide that number by your conversions. This will give you a clear idea of how efficient your site is and what your return on investment is.
Design and Brand Development
Unlike conversion rate and cost per conversion, brand development is an intangible that you’re going to have judge conceptually. Brand development is very important, especially over the long-term, so make sure your site is functioning property in this regard. Consider these factors:
3. Look and feel
Does your site still look fresh and exciting? Does it communicate the right message about your brand? Or does it look cute when it should look cutting-edge? Have web trends changed and left your site looking out-of-date?
4. User feedback
Do customers like the site? Have you received any complaints or compliments about it? Do you even have a way to get feedback?
5. Neglected sections
Are there parts of your site that are neglected or rarely updated? Ask yourself if you still need them. Check your analytics to see which pages are being visited the most and what that might mean about the user experience.
6. Multimedia
Do you have any multimedia elements on your site? If not, was it intentional? If you do, have they become dated or is the material no longer appropriate for what you’re trying to accomplish? Is your load time slow on multimedia pages?
Traffic
Raw traffic is not as important as conversion rate and cost per conversion, but it is an important thing to measure. If you have enough raw traffic coming in, you can start to tweak things for conversion rate optimization. But if you don’t have some baseline traffic, it will be like trying to irrigate a field with a dry canal. Consider the following questions about traffic:
7. What are the sources of your traffic?
Using your analytics, explore the primary sources of your traffic. Do they come from where you would expect them to come? If not, you may be trying to target the wrong audience. Does your traffic come mainly from organic search, pay-per-click advertising, referral sites, or directly? Knowing how people get to your site will help you know how to promote your site properly.
8. Where are your visitors located?
Google Analytics has a great feature that lets you see an estimated geographic region for each visitor. Take a good look at where your traffic is coming from. If you have a regional business, but your traffic is coming mainly from the other side of the country, you will need to rethink your strategy.
Keywords
Keywords are a set of words and phrases that you use to keep the content of your site focused and for which you want to rank in the search engines. To be effective, you should constantly be evaluating and adjusting your keywords. Consider these questions:
9. How well do you rank for your keywords?
You can use keyword tools like SeoBook’s Rank Checker to see how you’re doing on the major search engines. If you find that your rank poorly, or that you’re slipping, then it’s time to make a change. If you’re doing well, try to pinpoint what’s making that happen.
10. What keywords are working the best for you?
Using your analytics, see which keywords are attracting the most traffic to your site. You will also want to see how each keyword is converting. Put yourself in the place of a potential customer who is trying to find your site. Do your keywords make sense to him? If not, then it’s time for an update.
Security
Security is a major issue with keeping your site up to date. If you have your site on an open source platform like WordPress, Joomla or Droopal, you will want to check regularly on its security. Ask yourself these questions:
11. Has my site been hacked?
If the answer is yes, ask yourself what you’ve done differently since then for security. If you’ve just changed your passwords, then you probably need to do a more in-depth security upgrade. Having a hacked site can be dangerous to your users and it can destroy your credibility.
12. Do have the latest version of WordPress, Joomla, Droopal, or any other open source content management system you might be using?
Keep your open source platforms updated regularly to ensure that they have all the latest patches and security processes.
13. Are you PCI compliant?
If you are a larger merchant and need to be PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant, make sure you look ahead for any future problems that might make you fail a PCI compliance scan. If your servers or your security aren’t going to be up to muster, update your site as soon as possible. Waiting for the last minute on PCI compliance can be a nightmare.
Conclusion
If you find that your site is outdated or under-performing in function, design, traffic, keywords and security, then it’s definitely time for an update. Pay careful attention to function and design. If your site is really doing poorly in those areas then you may even want to consider a complete site redesign. I know that may sound daunting, but the redesign will go faster and easier when you keep in mind all that you’ve learned from your old site and as you consider the principles in this checklist. Of course you need to work within you budget, but if you have a choice, it’s better to re-do your site sooner than later. In the most egregious cases, your website might actually be hurting your brand and your sales. If that’s the situation, get it redesigned as soon as possible. Even after you’ve updated or redesigned, keep checking back about once a quarter to see how your site is performing. By constantly evaluating and updating your site, you can make it an effective advertising, sales and customer service tool.