Web Development Information |
10 Things You Should Be Monitoring On Your Website
Every business needs to know how it is doing. That's the idea behind exit surveys, customer feedback forms, suggestion boxes and other devices. Without feedback from the customer, monitoring inventory, expenses, revenue and other benchmarks, a business can take a quick slide down a slippery slope, without the owner ever seeing it coming - or being able to stop the slide. Webmasters also have things they should be monitoring on their websites. Most of these can be classified as traffic related or server performance related. Here is my top ten list. Traffic totals. You want to know how much traffic you are generating. If the line on the graph is heading down, you know you have to find out why. Referrers. It's not enough just to know how many visitors you are getting. You need to know where they are coming from. I discovered I was getting a lot of visitors from a Thanksgiving site. They were all being funneled into my Thanksgiving Happiness article. Suddenly I knew I should get more links from other Thanksgiving sites. Valuable information. Searches. Much to my surprise, my happiness site started getting a ridiculous number of hits from the search for "hairdressers". It just so happens I wrote a humor column on a hairdresser experience. I was surprised to see it getting so much traffic for such a generic, competitive search term. If that had been a term of a little more relevance for me, this information would have lead me to properly optimize the page and get even more traffic. Pages viewed per visit. If people visit only one page per visit, you have some work to convince them to visit more pages, like those that make you money. Pages visited. So you threw up on your site something cool as an add-on. How were you to know that other webmasters would link to it and send a whole bunch of traffic your way? Well, now you know, so add some copy to the page to pull visitors into the rest of your site. Forms. Are they all functioning? A good website monitoring service can keep tabs on them for you. The last thing you want is to have lost hundreds or thousands of subscribers because a sign-up form stopped functioning Shopping carts. Slow and complicated shopping carts are responsible for an estimated $25 billion in lost sales. Make sure yours is functioning properly. A good website monitoring service can watch this for you, too. Download speed. Clear your cache and test your pages. Hmm. Maybe those images are a bit large. Time to compress them, or even remove some. Remember that some people are on a much slower connection than you are. I use a satellite connection sometimes, but when I don't, my connection speed is 28K. Server speed. Are there problems with server speed? Maybe not where you are, but on the other side of the world. Global website monitoring can alert you to a transatlantic connection problem, so you can take it up with your web hosting service. Server accessibility. All the web hosts promise 99% accessibility. But is that for real? Who monitors them? By one estimate, 75% of inaccessibility is not on the hosting server, but rather on the Internet's backbone network and in global routing. A global website monitoring service can help identify the problem, so that you can work with your web hosting company to resolve it before too many sales are lost. Fun. If you are not having fun, audition for that drummer position in the local band. There is no point spending your life doing something that bores you. Webmastering should be fun. About The Author David Leonhardt is a freelance writer, and an online and offline publicity specialist. Contact him at: Executive class website monitoring: For free website monitoring, select "Lifetime Lite I" at: https://www.dotcom-monitor.com/SSL/Client_JoinForm.asp
MORE RESOURCES: Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting |
RELATED ARTICLES
Top 10 Webmaster Challenges Webmasters deal with a myriad of complex design challenges every day. This article will discuss the top ten challenges and provide solutions and tips for solving each problem. MySQL Database Handling in PHP Most interactive websites nowadays require data to be presented dynamically and interactively based on input from the user. For example, a customer may need to log into a retail website to check his purchasing history. Do Authors Need a Website? "I am a writer, not a business-person. I don't want to have anything at all to do with business," you might think. Eight Deadly Web Site Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Creating and maintaining an effective presence on the Web has become increasingly complex and challenging as the power of the Internet as a marketing tool becomes more and more necessary to entrepreneurs and emerging businesses.The good news is that technologies that were only available to the big guys just a couple of years ago - audio, video, ecommerce, e-mail database management applications - are now affordable for almost everybody. Earning From Your Website Before you start building your site, ask yourself "WHY?". Why did you decide to build your own web site. Nonsense! Why Do I Need a Website? "I don't sell anything online, I don't advertise online, in fact I don't really even know how to use a computer.. Lead Generation How to -- 10 Tips On Generating More Internet Sales Leads Many millions of dollars are being wasted on promoting and sending traffic to ineffective lead generation websites. Here are my top 10 tips to make your site generate more leads for you and your company. How to Get a Knock Out Website! The first step in setting up an online business.. How to Promote Your Law Firm Website On the Internet for Maximum Profit Making maximum profit from your law firm website is important, but as a lawyer you might not have any clue about search engine optimization and Internet marketing for your legal site. However, it is not so difficult to poise your website to be successful online even if you are not experienced with Internet marketing and driving website traffic. Why Your Business Needs a Website Even with the steady growth of the World Wide Web, many businesses do not have an online presence and some think that they do not need to have a presence at all."My business is doing fine as it is. How Does Your Website Make Me Feel? When people think about the Internet, they think about technology. When people hear that I am a Website strategy expert, they see me as a "techy type". Benefits Of Making Your Website Accessible To Disabled Users - Part 2: The Business Case The Disability Discrimination Act states that service providers must not discriminate against disabled people. A website is regarded as a service and therefore comes under this law. Make Your Own Brand! There are millions and millions of websites on the Internet. You NEED to be different in some way from all of them! If you could get a visitor to your website, that means nothing. The Problem with Automated Accessibility Testing Tools An automated accessibility tool is a piece of software which can test a web page, or even an entire website, for accessibility. Automated accessibility tools are useful because they can save you a huge amount of time. Six Basic Reasons Why Visitors Stay On Your Web Site 1. The first page appears quickly. You May Be Losing Valuable Traffic - And Not Even Know It! Here's something you may never have thought of before:If I were to type your domain name?http://www.yourdomain. Developing A Login System With PHP And MySQL Most interactive websites nowadays would require a user to log in into the website's system in order to provide a customized experience for the user. Once the user has logged in, the website will be able to provide a presentation that is tailored to the user's preferences. Website Success is Key The popular search engine Google indexes over 8 billion websites. Is one of them yours, or is your website just floating around in cyberspace and you're hoping your customers will just find you? Is your website a benefit to your organization or company? Is it just an expensive showpiece or is it of true value?These are some of the many questions that can be asked when launching a new website. Improve Conversion Rates - Load Times Your site is getting traffic, but conversion rates are horrible. Everything seems to be working, so what's wrong? Your site may simply be to slow. Get a Website!, Register Your Domain!: To Website or Not to Website? If you're fairly new to the Internet scene, you may just be a bit overhelmed with family members, friends, collegues, and advertisements urging you to get your own website for your business. Typically, this is good advice for businesses. |
home | site map | contact us |