How to tell if your website is effective:
A quick briefing for busy people

First, the 2-step test
1) do visitors stay for more than a few seconds?
2) what do they do when they leave?

Let me explain a little...

Potential customers coming to your site are making split-second decisions about whether or not to give you their precious time. (Just as you do when you arrive at a new site...) If more than 60% are leaving almost at once then something is fundamentally wrong with your site or your strategy for attracting visitors. Probably both.

Then, what are the visitors who stay on your site doing? Are they taking an action before they leave that moves them closer to doing business with you? For example, do they email you, phone, make a note to visit you, or tell their friends about you? If not, you must improve your site.

That's it!

If you want a definition of an effective business website, mentally fill in the blanks below:

Next, 3 practical steps to make your website more effective

1) Find out what your visitors are doing on your website, as described above. If your webmaster can't tell you this basic information, you need a different webmaster.

2) When you have analysed your statistics, ask your webmaster for a strategy to improve the effectiveness of your site. All sites can be improved! If you are unhappy with the answers or the results, contact me. I can work with you and/or your webmaster to agree and implement changes that will make your site more effective.

3) Bookmark this site* so you can find it again when you need to – or just contact me now to arrange a no-obligation look at, and brief discussion of, your site.
* SPEED TIP: Try Ctrl+D on your keyboard

Steve Hards
Website Effectiveness Consultant

PS Your webmaster's effectiveness improvement strategy should cover the following elements:

• Understanding your business and your customers or clients
• On-site tactics for achieving top rankings in search engine results
• Off-site tactics for achieving top rankings in search engine results
• Discussion of the possibilities of using blogs and social networking sites for improving rankings and visitor numbers
• Increasing visitor numbers (also called 'traffic generation strategies')
• Proposed changes to make it easier for your visitors to take action before leaving your site

PPS How am I doing?

1) How long have you been on my mini site?

2) Have you taken, or are you about to take, one of my desired actions? (i.e. bookmarked the page, emailed me, or phoned me.

Here are a few examples of websites I have produced. (The links open in new windows)
Waterside Dental Health at Canary Wharf, Docklands
Owene Energy
iTelecare
Opazity add-in for PowerPoint

If you want to know more, see the About page.