T&S Web Design

Tracking website statistics is a good thing. After all, how can you determine if your website is successful unless you set a goal for it, then track some statistics to see if you are reaching that goal?

With that as a given, so much of the traditional view of the important statistics to track just isn’t true. I was one of several discussion leaders a few months back at an event put on by the Edmond Area Chamber of Commerce. The topic was “Technology — Marketing Your Company on the Web.” During the course of the discussion, the topic of tracking statistics came up. I made the point that the tracking of hits was overrated and not nearly important as most people made it out to be. After all, when you’re paying rent for your office or storefront, do they accept hits as payment? Of course not. Your website needs to make you money.

Well, two other web design companies were present and argued the point with me. Now, it’s possible we were arguing semantics. I was saying that hits are not the goal, but tracking them can be the means to an end. They may have very well been meaning the same thing but emphasizing the means. But the point is, the popular process is to track a lot of statistics that ultimately don’t mean anything.

The book Web Design for ROI talks about several “metrics that don’t matter (as much).” I’m going to hijack their list here, and give my own commentary on each of the items.

Metrics that don’t matter (as much)

• Traffic
  Here’s my simple, blunt comment on traffic: Who cares how many people are visiting your site if they aren’t buying anything?
• Time on site and average page views
  Web Design for ROI gives an excellent example here. The general view is that the longer someone spends on your website, the better. However, if after a redesign, someone is able to make a purchase quicker, that’s not really a bad thing.
• Hits
  Hits measure the total number of objects (files, images, pages, etc) downloaded from your website. This number can easily be inflated simply by adding a lot of pictures to your front page. Again, who cares how many hits you have if you don’t have money coming in from them?
• Surveys
  We’re talking here about surveying customers, clients and/or website visitors about the website. Watching what someone does when they visit your site will give infinitely more accurate and useful information about your website than asking them about it will.
• Focus groups
  Surveys and focus groups share some of the same problems. In addition, the feedback from individuals in the groups will be impacted by other individuals in their group.
• Industry average conversion rates
  While you do understandably want better conversion rates (simply put, $$ per website visitor) than your competitors, there’s no real way to directly compare your conversion rates with theirs. You would have to have the same exact site with only slight differences to reasonably compare conversion rates.

Keep in mind as you look at any statistic that the ultimate goal of your website is (probably) to increase your revenue and provide a return on your investment. They are not the goal itself, but use them as a tool to move your company towards that goal.

No.

Let me elaborate.

Years ago, website were all about controling the user’s experience. Some sites went so far as to set up their site with a series of “Next Page” buttons instead of actual, usable navigation. Thanksfully, the web design industry has come a long way.

In more modern times, we have come to realize that the best way to keep a website visitor on your website is to let them navigate it however they want to. In fact, with all the freedom that’s out there now, people tend to get irritated when websites try to control the experience. With links to other sites specifically, you just need to provide good content and information on your website, and they’ll come back.

Although I’m probably not an average website user, I tend to leave sites that open links in new windows. I have heard the argument that most website visitors are less sophisiticated than myself. That may very well be true.

However, I’ve stood next to a client and watched as they followed a link from one website to another, then discovered they didn’t know how to get back to the previous site. (The back button in the browser is not universally understood, which shouldn’t be a surprise to web professionals.) However, as this person had doubtlessly encoutered this situation before, she simply closed that browser window, opened a new one and went back to the website.

So a lack of skill or web-savvy will not hinder anyone when links do not open in a new window. If they do any amount of web surfing at all, they’ve already learned to work around it.

Finally, we’re going to talk about the best way for a website to turn a profit, and that’s making actual money.

There are a many, many ways for a website to make money, and we’ll talk about a few of those.

First, you can sell advertising on your website, either directly or through a broker like Google AdSense, where they find the advertisers for you and automatically place them on your site. Direct selling of advertising on your site cuts out the middle-man and can, therefore, be more profitable. However, Google makes it very easy to set up AdSense on your website. AdSense scans the content of your site and links to relevant sponsors that pay Google when someone clicks on those links. Then Google pays you when someone clicks on the links, taking a cut off the top. The ads can be placed anywhere on your website. You can see in the screenshot to the left where ads were placed at the top of the website.

A website can be a lead-generating tool. You can find people who are possibly interested in your product by offering an e-book or report on a topic related to your business that potential clients and customers would find interesting. Just ask for very basic contact information and have your website automatically email them the report for free.

You generate leads similarily with giveaways, newsletters, or even with a simple “Get a Quote” form. Anything that collects very basic contact information and offers a benefit can help you to capture leads with your website. And the less information you request, the more likely people will be to sign up.

When you link to any such form, make sure the link is prominent on your website. It needs to be one of the first things that visitors to the website see. Website visitors tend to start looking at the top right of the page, then they look to the right, then down the page. So towards the top is generally a good place for the button. You can see good button placement on the website screenshot to the right.

The last method for making money on your website is probably the one people think of the most, and that is selling product directly on your site.

The key with selling anything on your website is to make it as easy as possible for people to buy. While there are both free and paid shopping cart solutions you can install on your website, those are often not necessary if you only have a few items. PayPal and Google Checkout both offer easy to integrate shopping carts. All you do is create an account with them, copy their code for “Add to cart” buttons and your website is ecommerce capable.

Of course, it helps if you also have items in your store that are appealing and easy to ship. While you may not want to list all of your available inventory online, your best bet is small items that are $20-$50 dollars. People are generally pretty comfortable buying something online in that price range, and will be that much more likely to impulse buy.

Now you’ve seen how websites can give you a great return on your investment when you set them up to save time, save money and make money. You should not be satisified with a simple brochure website that gives you an “online presence.” Instead, the website needs to be actively contributing to the bottom line of your business, or it’s not worth the money you spent on it.

< Back to part 3

Ultimately, in any project, we want the client to receive a website that not only works, but is easy to navigate and visually pleasing to them. So let’s say we did our research and cranked out the best design ever made, if the client doesn’t like it, then tons of time has been wasted and it’s back to the drawing board. Clients can help the designer more than they know when trying to research, conceptualize and eventually execute a website design.

First off, we need stuff. Pictures, logos, graphics, movies… anything that can help us in the design process, especially stuff that you want in the actual design. I have designed multiple websites where I didn’t even know what the logo of the company looked like until the design was finished, because the client did not provide it beforehand. Without those crucial elements, your design might not look like what you had in mind.

Another great thing clients can do to help is to let us know what you like. Give us the URL of other sites that you like. Don’t just pick some sites really quick, but actually look around and find out what you like and dislike and tell us. Don’t limit yourself to your field either, elements in different websites are not limited by field. Tell us what you like about them, color, navigation, layout, expandability, movement, theme, texture, mood, fonts…anything you like and even dislike. We can’t know what you want unless you tell us.

By doing these simple tasks, you can help out tremendously in the entire website development process. Take a little bit of time and thought, and we will be able to better understand what you want, allowing you to receive a website that we, and more importantly you, are happy with.

There are several tools that I don’t think I could do web development without. They give me the power to find out valuable information about the pages I’m viewing. They even let me edit the HTML and CSS directly, without having to refresh the browser window! I can debug JavaScript, test the page with different viewport sizes, view the size of every file loaded by the browser, and much more. All these tools are plugins for the Firefox web browser. Let’s take a closer look at these invaluable tools.

• Web Developer Toolbar - This toolbar gives me options for disabling everything from css to browser cache to images to cookies. It also has very nice options for filling out forms and viewing just about anything I could possibly want to know about certain elements on the page. I can resize the viewport and make sure I have no CSS or JavaScript errors with a simple glance at the toolbar.
• Firebug - This nifty little plugin is extremely useful. I can highlight any element on the page with a single click of the mouse. I can then view and change all the CSS related to the element. I can also view the DOM properties and functions of an element. I can debug javascript by setting breakpoints in the code. Firebug even lets me edit the HTML of the page and also tells me how much bandwidth is used in retrieving each file. (My favorite thing to do is edit pages so they make fun of Tim!)
• Google Toolbar - Lastly, Google Toolbar, although it’s not technically a web development tool, is very useful. I use it to manage all my bookmarks, so when I find something web development related at home I add it to my google bookmarks and I have it the next day at work. I can also search anywhere on google.com (Google Images, Google Maps, etc) or even the current page very quickly.

These are all excellent tools that I use on a daily basis, but by no means are they the only tools. I have tinkered with several excellent widgets for Opera that do almost the same things. There are many tools out there no matter what browser you use for development.