Focusing on Online Performance
(5 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...
We believe that every website should have a clearly defined purpose, provide a great user experience, and produce performance driven results.
What do you expect from your website?
More than often, businesses, organizations, and individuals don’t know how to answer the simple question: what is the purpose of your website? Websites tend to be defined by either their functionality or their design. Rarely are they described in terms of their purpose, their user experience, and the positive outcomes expected from online visitors.
Ultimately, we wish that everybody could answer this simple question and understand the intrinsic value of having a website. After more than 10 years of consulting on online strategy and web design, we have no doubt that a website can significantly impact an organization’s bottom line. Granted it has been designed for performance.
What defines online performance?
Online performance is usually defined as any measurement of a website’s success in creating positive outcomes or reaching pre-defined goals. Another terminology used is measuring the “conversion rate” of an online visitor into either a customer or into an interested follower.
A few examples of measurable conversions could be: online sales, page view (and ad displays), subscriptions to a newsletter, registrations to events, contact or inquiry emails or filled in forms, etc.
Performance is usually linked to the way a website is designed and how it successfully drives an online visitor to fulfill actions that lead to positive outcomes for the owner of the website.
Does online performance matter?
Of course it does. If there are no expectations related to whether online visitors will come to a website and use it, why bother?
Online performance matters because more and more organizations have figured out how to competitively use their websites as efficient marketing and sales tools that generate measurable brand awareness and revenue streams.
Performance should maximize return on investment (ROI) which would justify creating a website in the first place.
Also, there is no point in putting efforts and money in driving traffic to a website if the website doesn’t perform well. It is lost conversion potential at a cost.
How to measure online performance?
Online performance can be measured online with a web analytics tools (such as Google Analytics) and offline by tracking calls or use of online coupons (for example) related to information or promotions found on the website.
Online performance is usually measured from 2 angles:
- what visitors do on the website (conversion performance)
- how visitors get to the website (online & offline marketing performance)
Conversion performance shouldn’t only be measured on the positive outcomes (i.e. the bottom line) but it should also track the performance of every step a user takes to fulfill an expected action or goal. This is essential in order to uncover usability issues that might negatively impact the website’s performance.
A best practice in measuring online conversion performance is to:
- define expected goals (increase page views, sales, subscriptions, registrations, etc.)
- define each step of the fulfillment process on the website (i.e. conversion funnels)
- measure performance of reached goals and of each step of the fulfillment process
- adjust the website to optimize performance when bottlenecks are revealed
Online performance as a compass
Once organizations and individuals start seeing their website as a performance driven marketing tool, there is no looking back, their focus changes from having a “pretty website with a contact page” to expecting their website to perform and impact the bottom line along certain conversion funnels.
This new awareness then dictates the website’s requirements in terms of functionality and design which both should support the performance objectives.
Once the performance driven website is under production, organizations should then focus on their marketing plan (online and offline). And here again, performance should be the decision making compass in order to maximize return on investment and conversions.
Tags: conversion funnels, Conversion rates, Online Conversion, online marketing, online performance, online strategy, performance, ROI, web analytics
Posted in Marketing
June 9th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Wow Stephane,
Great article - as well as providing information that helps business owners understand why they have a web site (ROI) your explanation of how they can measure their conversion rate is very helpful - especially from a designers perspective. A lot of businesses think of their website as a brochure, rather than a tool they can use to track customer trends and monitor the effective marketing of their product/service. Great article!
June 9th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Could’nt agree more ! How often do i meet client that don’t even have a web analytics tool to asses their website.
Regarding R.O.I. i would also include assessing all the pre & post website i.e. traffic generating campaigns and loyalty programs.
Thanks for this great article !
August 30th, 2009 at 7:34 am
so true - how often do we deal with client who wants a website but really has no idea why and what they expect from their site
September 3rd, 2009 at 2:49 am
It really is surprising how little some business owners understand analytics and the value of monitoring and tracking customer trends and shifts.
I think the problem often stems from shortsighted approaches to relationships with customers and visitors to a site; the short-term focus on conversion rates and sales alone can sometimes only serve to create an adverse relationship between visitors and the brand.
December 23rd, 2009 at 5:31 pm
yeah, very true ! thx for the article !