10 Questions to Evaluate Your Website’s Business Performance
May 5th, 2010
Thanks to a client request and a full redesign under way for the Growthroute’s website and blogs, I have done a fair amount of work and thinking lately on what constitutes a good website from a business standpoint. I thought I’d share some of the results here, in the form of 10 questions, and invite your comments and inputs. I will integrate the best contributions into a subsequent, improved version.
10 questions to evaluate your website’s business performance:
- Does it tell visitors what the company does in 5 seconds or less?
- Does it cater specifically to the top groups you target, and is it organized around those audiences? Does it answer the main questions a typical group member would have?
- Does it tell visitors what the company does not do in 5s or less? Is it differentiated from your competition?
- Does it give a good first impression? (ask this question to a woman – even if you have no women in your audience! They have a better sense of esthetics than most men)
- Are there clear Calls to Action on each page e.g. Phone number, feedback form, newsletter or social media sign-up, “click here to read the next page”?
- Does it include easy ways to provide feedback and interact with a user community? Do you give visitors a reason to return or a way to maintain frequent contacts?
- Does it include interactive content to support the message and help “make it stick”, e.g. relevant widget, quizz?
- Is there a way to access any page from the homepage (and most other pages except Purchase pages) in 2 clicks or less?
- Is the site URL promoted in every single outbound communication from the company?
- Does it contain the keywords your audience is likely to use when searching for such solutions on Google? Does it show in top 10 Google results for relevant keywords?
Often a qualitative review based on such common-sense questions will add more value than the detailed analysis of traffic and engagement metrics I see many companies focus on – especially in the early design stages.