Finding the formula that works for you
So you’ve built that web site to the best of your ability, you’ve taken into account all that you think the user wants and you’re ready. Navigation, ad copy all seem to be perfect. You spend money on ads and the traffic starts rolling in.
You better make sure you have a good user tracking program so you can analyze user behaviour. Even if you think you’ve got the site layout right, and the content to draw them in, you can only tell if you track the statistics.
Are the users leaving on a specific page? Do they consistently like to search a specific key word? What pages are most popular? Can you improve?
The advantage if being able to track users is that you can find hard evidence where you can. In a real brick store, you can see people, talk to them, in a web store you can’t.
With proper planning, you can experiment with copy, page layout or other promotions by simply tracking the difference in user behaviour and conversions when you make these changes. Only through experimentation can you get to your ultimate goal, which is not always what we think it is.
Most hosting providers offer tracking software within the package, Google Analytics offers a free system that works pretty well, so there are no excuses.
This approach is nothing new, but so many people don’t take this advice. If this is the article that gets you too, then great, if not, it may lead up to it, either way, get up and do something if you aren’t already. To those of you who are, good for you. Tweaking like this is the difference between being good or being great.
So keep tinkering, until you get it, then tinker some more. Like anything, good results take hard work.