Performance Analytics - A Website Journey to Website Optimization - Part 1 Getting Started

February 1, 2010 by Peter de Gosztonyi.

Web-Insight provides consulting services to large and small organizations on how to improve and measure their website performance. We have been involved in just about all of the stages of website redesign from full web redesign frameworks, information architecture to home page benchmarking. Our clients range from the Canadian Federal Government to associations and small business. So far all of our clients have been located in Ottawa, so using our website was relegated to a simple brochure or business card site.

Times have changed and the Internet is a much more sophisticated marketing medium and essential for any business to have a presence where it matters.

This blog is an attempt to document this journey and to see what impact one can have and what can be learned. At the time of the writing of this entry, we haven’t reached the end so I don’t know the outcome. That we will learn over time.

Scenario:

• Our website is several years old and needed a freshening up.
• We are using Dreamweaver to update the site but it is getting very cumbersome and takes far more time to update than I have to do it
• Other people also want to update their section but have to go through me to do it and I can’t always respond in a timely fashion
• We need a simple yet full featured Content Management System that is cost effective and has all of the features we need.
• Website should be optimized for SEO
• Our business focus has changed
• Need to focus on inbound Marketing to drive more traffic

Solution:

The web-hosting and CMS part were very easy to resolve since we already use 1&1 and have been very pleased, so when they came out with the 1&1MyBusiness offering it was just what we needed. So I configured the site (www.web-insight-ottawa.com) as the test site before I redirected our www.web-insight.ca. I immediately ran into conceptual design problems with content, layout and Search Engine Optimization as well as marketing the site through social networking.

The old site was just not doing its job so I decided to improve my website conversion rate by following a plan to design an effective website and use social networking to build traffic and customers. Our current website is www.web-insight.ca and it has been used simply as a brochure site providing some information mostly from the blog entries that I have been writing and little else.

The starting point: decision to place effort on this medium to:

1. Attract and connect with my customers
2. Convert these visitors to leads and then to customers
3. Measure the success of these efforts

This certainly sounds simple enough, but the very first question is where do I start and what are the next steps.

What I am planning to do is to document my experience with building a new website that is focused on inbound marketing and geared to generate customers that are not just local.

Topics that we will cover:

• Where to start
• Website objectives
• Benchmarking the performance measures
• Audit the website assets
• Website business measures
• Home page and landing page layouts
• Website content and architecture
• Performance analytics to measure success
• Monitoring website

I am sure as I go through this process I will digress and go off on tangents which hopefully should be interesting. At least you may partake in my rants and raves.

Note that I will be listing the website references on Performance Analytics Reference page

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