Too often I get a potential client wanting to develop a website for their business and more often than not they don’t really know why they want it, or what they expect it to do. The usual response is “Because everybody is getting one“.
Well that is great, however I recommend thinking very throughly about why you would want a web site. A good plan with clear goals can easily provide a ROI (return on investment) on a web site design that will pay for itself in a very short amount of time. I don’t see the cost of a web site as an expense, but rather as an investment because it can, if done correctly generate sales that you could never have otherwise made.
The key to making sure your website is performing at it’s best, is by measuring it. With many tools available today it is easy to track what your visitors do on your site, how they found you, what pages they viewed, how long they stayed, where they are from etc. Using these analytical tools, helps you to improve areas of your web site that are not performing. Tools like Google Adwords can help you find keyword phrases that provide conversions in a short amount of time providing you with valuable information for your natural SEO keyword targeting over the longer term. There is no point targeting keywords that don’t convert into sales, and it is better to find out that information earlier rather than later.
When your web designer finishes your website, it’s not really finished. I say this because a website will always need fresh content, monitoring for performance, small adjustments, and always require testing of variations of the pages to determine which page layouts perform better with your customers.
Follow these simple strategies and your website can perform better than you may have ever imagined.
More information about Improving Web Site Conversions can be found in an interesting article at Sitepoint.
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
