SetYourMetrics

You are what you measure.

When designing a web site, many companies forget the most important bit. It is important to decide before your site is launched how you will know if your site is a success? What exactly are you going to measure?


For example, if you hope that a web site will bring you more business, will sales people on the phone ever be told to ask, "Can I ask where you found us?", and that data kept somewhere. Without deciding on these things first you can be left asking someone on sales, "So, has it been busy lately?"

There are lots of things you can monitor about any web site but most stats packages don't integrate with your business, they tell you how many visitors you had last month but not how many new customers. Google analytics can tell you which pages were most popular but not which pages converted somebody into a customer.

At times, "Setting Your Metrics" can sound like common sense but many sites can be transformed by choosing with some skill what you want to measure and then displaying that information in a way that has some positive impact on your business rather than being lost in a log report somewhere.