Doing business online requires managing and measuring lots of moving parts. And, I always say that what doesn’t get measured gets forgotten.
So, with all the metrics you could monitor, what do you assess? In short, everything. Here’s a list of at-minimum ‘think abouts’ to get you started:
Website metrics.
How many unique visitors do you have?
How many should you have based on your industry?
How many page views?
How many should you have?
Who are your top three referral sources?
E-mail mailing list.
How many people are on your e-mail mailing list?
How many subscribers do others in your industry with comparable experience have?
What is the percent increase from last month?
What’s a good percentage to increase?
Website lead generation.
Does your lead generation tool deliver the “lead trinity”? 1)Positions you as an expert. 2) Qualifies the lead as a quality lead for your business. 3) Gives you permission to market to them again.
If not, what lead generation tool would?
Does your web site automatically produce leads regularly?
Product/marketing funnel.
Do you put potential clients in the position of either working with you or not?
Do you have freebies for them to sample – without signing up?
How many should you have and what topics should they cover?
Blog activity.
How many visitors does your blog have?
How many posts per week do you post on average?
What are the industry standards?
Are you meeting your blogging goals?
Online marketing.
How many original articles are you posting online?
How much time are you spending adding thought leadership content about your area of expertise?
Online sales.
How much revenue do you make solely online?
How much should you make?
Which is your most profitable product/service?
Which is your least profitable product/service?
Overall direction.
Where are you going with your business online?
By when do you need to ‘get there’?
Who can help you get there faster, easier?
What are your KPIs (key performance indicators) – measurements you can use to see if you’re on-track?
Again, this is certainly not an exhaustive list but it’s more than good enough to get you started. This may seem like a long list of things to consider. And, if you’re just starting out, your answers to these many of these questions might be “zero”. But, that’s OK. Start at the top and take a section at a time. Figure out a way to keep the information you find pertinent on your radar *at least* once per month. Maybe it’s a report. A graph. A spreadsheet. Something. Anything.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 3:00 pm and is filed under E-Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Leave a Reply
