How Do You Know If Your Website Is Working

[chuckyfish]

I recently got my website on line. I think it looks pretty good. I just got my summary for the amount of hits and where they came from. Im a fisherman not a computer guy. How many hits should I expect and what should the ratio of hits to sales be. How long does it really take to get this thing moving. Im Trying to increase my business with the wesite. are there any ideas on how to increase sales once they get to the site. I hade almost 700 hits in the month of may. That was the first month. is that good what can I expect and how can I make it better.

[flyfisher]

Your website is only part of the online marketing puzzle. You need to get your website at the top of search engines for particular terms and also the creation of banner ads helps too.

All of this costs money though and once the customer gets there are they going to like your site and be able to move through it easily an make purchases quickly and without a hassle.

I do a lot of marketing analytics for the website of the company I work for (larger bank) and 700 hits is not many at all for a month. Now granted we pay for advertising etc...but if we saw that low in an hour period we would probably think there were problems with the tracking or the site itself.

One thing I will advise is to create a "dashboard" of your online performance and have that associated with sales and any changes you made in product, advertising etc...then you can truly monitor performance

[derekxec]

yeah 700 hits a month is pretty low but you have to start with something....google analytics is pretty good to track how things are going...read up on Search Engine Optimization and search for the stuff you sell and see how far down on the search you are...if you are low you need to redo your tags and such and when you get to like the top 3 or 4 on searches your business should take off no problem...also have a site index so googles crawlers can do their job and put you on top

 

also what is your website make it as easy as possible to navigate it...if someone has to click 20 times to find where to buy something then they will lose interest before they buy and move on...also if you havent already get on facebook and twitter and check out some fishing groups and add lotssssss of people and then start advertising on your facebook/twitter

 

you could also make short videos and put them on youtube and put google adsense on them and get paid per view while also advertising your site and everything else

[flyfisher]

Keep in mind too that to get at the top of the searches you need to pay to get there, it doesn't happen for free.

[Snakehead Whisperer]

Your website is only part of the online marketing puzzle. You need to get your website at the top of search engines for particular terms and also the creation of banner ads helps too.

All of this costs money though and once the customer gets there are they going to like your site and be able to move through it easily an make purchases quickly and without a hassle.

I do a lot of marketing analytics for the website of the company I work for (larger bank) and 700 hits is not many at all for a month. Now granted we pay for advertising etc...but if we saw that low in an hour period we would probably think there were problems with the tracking or the site itself.

One thing I will advise is to create a "dashboard" of your online performance and have that associated with sales and any changes you made in product, advertising etc...then you can truly monitor performance

Great tips, especially the part I highlighted in red.

 

Keep in mind too that to get at the top of the searches you need to pay to get there, it doesn't happen for free.

This isn't really true.

 

While paying somebody to get your site visible to search engines will help if you're totally clueless and unwilling to do the homework, the same results can be achieved for free if you familiarize yourself with the way that Google and other search engines crawl and rank sites then organize yours accordingly. Site ranking is done almost entirely on relevance. Having other sites link to yours will make it more relevant, but even this is negligible. Including meta tags in the source code of your site will have the largest impact, as well as having a domain name that relates to your site/business (e.g. if you register chuckyfish.com it will be less relevant than chuckyfishlures.com.) If you pay somebody for this service, they will ensure that you have all of your ducks in a row and not much more (unless you want to pay to have ads included in search, but does anybody click those? I don't.) If your time is more valuable than the cost of their service then perhaps it's best to hire somebody. The downside of hiring somebody to do this is that you will remain clueless as to how it works and dependent on these people as long as you're online.

 

See this...

 

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70897&topic=2370570&ctx=topic

[Felix77]

Having the site up and running is the first part of the equation.  The other parts include (some were already mentioned)

 

Search Engine Optimization - Ensure your site is easy for search engines to find.  Things like meta tags, page names and consistent content is key here.

 

Search Engine ratings - The more optimized the site the better chances of moving up the ranks without paying.  To ultimately get the prime spots on top you need to pay.

 

Keep content relevant and fresh - Search engines take into consideration the activity of the content on your site.  Keeping this fresh and "new" helps keep them up in the ranks as well.  Someone suggested youtube videos.  I would also suggest a main page which you update periodically to ensure that at least that page is being considered "fresh content".

 

Other social media outlets - Facebook for example has done a ton for my businesses to help spread the word about it.  If you truly have a good product then you will be shocked as to how fast it will get forwarded, friended etc.  That kind of marketing is the wave of the future.  FB is ahead of the curve in this regard.

 

Old school advertising - We have numerous local newspapers which offer free 1-2 sentence posts about something you offer.  If you have those opportunities put your name out there.  Chances are they also have a website and it also gets posted up there.  Another thing of value is referrals from other sites.  It's not much but every bit counts.

 

Site referrals - Mentioned in brief above but anytime you can get another site to refer to your site it helps as well.

 

 

After everything I said ... if you don't offer a quality product/service and quality customer service it will not work.  Make that a priority and you will be surprised how far the good ol' word-of-mouth will take you above all these other suggestions.

 

Good luck!

[Glenn]

I just need to make something very, very clear here: You do not need to pay to rank at the top of organic search results.  This is fact.

 

Now if you're talking about the paid listings (those are usually in color-shaded areas at the top or on the right side of the organic listings), then that's different.  That's paid advertising, which is entirely different from organic listings.

 

Anyone who thinks you have to pay to get to the top of organic listings either has something they're trying to sell you, or doesn't know much about SEO.

 

That said, it's not easy to get to the top.  Don't let anyone fool you. It's hard.  As mentioned above, consistently posting quality, original content on a well optimized site paired with the more links, videos, social shares, etc. you have...over time (not all at once!), the better chances you'll have of ranking well.  Organic search, unlike paid advertising, takes time...a lot of time....to see results. It's very slow-moving and there are no shortcuts.  So don't expect your rankings to jump up to the top even if you do everything mentioned above.  It won't.  But gradually, over time (months), you'll see a steady improvement.

 

Hope that helps!

[Snakehead Whisperer]

I just need to make something very, very clear here: You do not need to pay to rank at the top of organic search results.  This is fact.

 

Now if you're talking about the paid listings (those are usually in color-shaded areas at the top or on the right side of the organic listings), then that's different.  That's paid advertising, which is entirely different from organic listings.

 

Anyone who thinks you have to pay to get to the top of organic listings either has something they're trying to sell you, or doesn't know much about SEO.

 

That said, it's not easy to get to the top.  Don't let anyone fool you. It's hard.  As mentioned above, consistently posting quality, original content on a well optimized site paired with the more links, videos, social shares, etc. you have...over time (not all at once!), the better chances you'll have of ranking well.  Organic search, unlike paid advertising, takes time...a lot of time....to see results. It's very slow-moving and there are no shortcuts.  So don't expect your rankings to jump up to the top even if you do everything mentioned above.  It won't.  But gradually, over time (months), you'll see a steady improvement.

 

Hope that helps!

It's a whole lot faster than it used to be though.

 

Great post Glenn!

[Felix77]

Absolutely right Glenn.  When I referred to payment I was referring to those "premium listings" offered by the Search Engines.  Usually some type of pay per click/keyword combination.  To organically move to the top Glenn is absolutely spot on!