How do you know where you are going, if you don’t know where you’ve been? As I get the opportunity to talk to a number of eyecare practices, it amazes me how many have no concept of who, what, when, where, how, or why is going on with their websites. This goes from single-store practices to multi-store chains.
Do you have good web stats to look at and even if you are lucky enough to have them, what are you looking at, what should you be looking at, and what are you doing with the information after you’ve looked at it? Let’s explore Google Analytics for just a few minutes and see what we can learn in minutes about a website. Google Analytics is pretty much the industry standard and it’s free, so it can be embedded with just about any website to give you a good measurement of your online efforts.
What statistics should you interest yourself with? Let’s stop with one statistic that’s been bandied about for over a decade….hits. Hits are for boxers and top 40 artists. Right here, right now, I will bet anyone $100,000 reading this post that within two weeks of access to your website construction I can double the number of hits your website receives. Anyone want to take me up on my $100,000 bet?
Darn… no one said yes. Hits are the measurement of the ingredients that make up a web page. A page with 5 pictures and an html file would make up 6 hits for every person that views it. A web designer could embed a dozen or more hidden files on that same webpage without ever really changing the look of your page and increase your “hits” dramatically. What you should be concerned with is:
Visitors – How many total people came to your website in any given time period
Unique Visitors – How many different people came to your website in any given period (some may come more than once)
Time on Site – How long did the average visitor spend within your website
Bounce Rate – How many people came to your site, saw nothing to make them go further and went elsewhere
We can then look even further deeper as to the terms someone is typing in to find us and better massage our website to take advantage of those searches.
Just as a smart eye care practice measures their inventory turns and what is selling, so too do you want to measure what is and is not working with your website. In this day and age where 75% of consumers are researching your business or practice before stepping foot in your door, why aren’t you researching them in return?____________
Daniel Feldman, is a co-founder to the Visionaries Group visionariesgroup.com (on Facebook) and CEO of dba Communications dbadesigns.com, (on Facebook) a web design and social media firm specializing in helping eye care practices achieve success.
