Is your site valuable to its visitors? While nailing down a website’s value is sort of an elusive thing, here are seven remarkably simple ways to put your site’s value to the test…
One – Ask Yourself If Your Site Presells. Instead of just coming out and asking for the sale, one of the best ways to test a website’s value to its visitors is to analyze what information is given to the visitor upfront at no cost or with no further request. Giving visitors answers to their questions before expecting further action from them builds trust. That’s what preselling is all about!
Two – Determine The Bounce Rate. Keeping tabs on how your visitors interact with your site, such as with Google Analytics, is always an excellent idea. One key area to track is your site’s bounce rate. The more visitors that actually stick around and browse the site, the better the site’s value.
Three – Look At Visitor Participation. While not every web presence is set up for visitor participation, for those that are, stickiness another metric that can indicate value. For example, if the site involves a blog, are visitors actively participating in the commentary?
Four – Analyze The Indicators. Indicators like PageRank and Alexa don’t mean everything, but they can be helpful. The PageRank indicator from Google has had a varied past when it comes to determining site effectiveness, but many find it useful for loosely comparing one site’s value to another. The same goes for a site’s Alexa ranking. While neither is the perfect gauge, they can certainly affect a visitor’s perception of a site’s value.
Five – Find Out If Goals Are Being Met. Surely you have some kind of goal or desired action that you’d like visitors to your website to make. Determining how often visitors take the intended action, or how far they follow the site’s “funnel” towards that action is a strong indicator of the site’s value to customers.
Six – Adapt To The Changes. The web changes rapidly. If a site hasn’t made any significant updates or improvements in a year or two, chances are it’s officially a thing of the past. While radical redesigns aren’t always the only answer, it is wise to find and offer the latest functionality and features that tomorrow’s visitors will expect to see. Websites that roll with the punches maintain their value.
Seven – Discover How Visitors Are Finding The Site. Once you’ve developed a strong SEO plan for your site, another way to determine if your site is providing value is to keep track of how well the SEO is working. Are visitors to your site landing on the right pages corresponding with their search term? Receiving targeted and motivated visitors – the kind that effective SEO delivers – is valuable.
George Chaney
President/CEO
SEO King, Inc.
