Can you afford not to analyse your website performance?

I passionately believe that having an effective website can play a crucial role in attracting and keeping valuable customers. Yet, based on over 12 years web marketing experience I suspect that 95% of UK business websites fail to perform well.

One key reason is that so few companies use a web metrics specialist to analyse which parts of their web marketing are working and which are not. 

Having goals for the website is an essential pre-requisite for success. Once the goals have been defined it is possible to evaluate how well different aspects of the web marketing and website perform in attracting and converting target prospects to valuable customers. 

However, many companies I meet do not have sufficient (or often any) resource allocated to analysing website metrics or performance. The reasons vary but sometimes it's because:-

• they don't know how to do it 
• they have tried to use Google Analytics but can't see the wood for the trees
• they don't have the time
• they can't afford it

Can you afford not to?

Consider an example of a company that sells a product for £40. If their marketing cost per visit is 50p and they have 10,000 visits then their total marketing cost is £5,000.

If they covert 3% of visitors they will make 300 sales @ £40 = £12,000 revenue. If their product profit margin is 50% their product costs are £6,000.  With the marketing cost above of £5,000, this gives a profit of £1,000 and a marketing ROI of 20%.

However, consider if the analysis of web metrics leads to a number of improvements that increase conversion from 3% to 4%. The sales revenue would increase to £16,000 (10,000 *4% * £40). The 50% product profit margin means their product costs are £8,000.  With the marketing cost remaining the same at £5,000, profit has increased from £1,000 to £3,000.

So an improvement in conversion of just 1%  triples profit and triples Marketing ROI from 20% to 60%.

So can you afford not to analyse your website performance?

Read more on Web Marketing ROI

Remember...web marketing is about solving customers' problems profitably.

Peter Hawtin is an internet marketing specialist with Brand New Way, a UK web marketing agency which helps companies to attract and retain valuable customers online.