Fine Tuning Your Web Site
The number of Internet users around the world is still increasing and so are their demands.
Todays Internet surfer is no longer mystified or in awe of the online world. They expect high-quality Web sites that utilize innovative technology to make their journey easy and visually enjoyable.
Companies are now faced with the task of meeting their visitors needs with smaller budgets and fewer skilled workers in an industry that sees a new competitor entering the market every day.
The trick now is to actually determine what your visitors want in a Web site and grab market share before your competitor does. How do you do it?
The first step is to look at your major competitors Web site. Pretend this is the first time you have seen it and that you know nothing about the products or services they sell. After you have finished surfing through their site, ask yourself the following:
- What impressed you most about the site?
- What was the least impressive feature?
- What annoyed you the most about the site?
- Did it provide the information you needed?
The next step, which is the most difficult, is to look at your own Web site objectively and answer the same questions.
The last step is to ascertain (through detailed web site analysis) what your visitors like about your current site. This information is located in your servers log files.
The following Funnel Web reports will reveal your visitors opinions about your site:
- Page History - Indicates the pages that contain the most interesting information and/or products.
- Time online - A large percentage of your traffic should spend at least two to four minutes online.
- Video content - Shows the most popular streaming media content.
- Downloads - Details the files your visitors chose to download.
- Exit pages - If the major exit page is your homepage, you need to change it fast.
By now you should have an idea of what your visitors like and dislike in a Web site and the type of information and/or products they want to see more of.
Armed with this information, you are ready to fine tune your Web site and give it the competitive edge!
Once you have changed your Web site, you will need to analyze your visitors online behavior patterns and gauge their reactions. If your visitors spend more time online, read more pages and come back more often then you definitely fine-tuned your Web site correctly.
If not, you will have to go through the information again and decide where you went wrong. Regularly performing this type of content analysis is crucial to attaining and retaining market share.
The days in which one could get by on the Internet by just winging it are over.
This site looks best using Safari or FireFox.
