InsightIQ Blog

How do you know your Website is working if you don't "sell" anything?

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May 27 2009

I was speaking with a fellow marketer in the not-for-profit space the other day and he asked me how we evaluate the success of our Website, speicifcally, "you don't sell anything online, so you can't look at purchase behavior.  How do you know if your site is working for you?"

It's a great question and one we sought to answer long before the site was built, content was written, and wireframes were approved.  Essentially, we had to determine what the site needed to do for us - what role it would play in the prospect lifecycle (i.e., awareness - education- consideration - purchase.)  Ultimately, we developed the site strategy to influence the education and consideration phases of the lifecycle and to drive conversion.  The design just followed naturally.

It all comes down to conversion.  What a word, "conversion"...it means different things to different people.  A retailer defines conversion on the site as "purchase."  My not-for-profit colleague defines it as "donation."  But in the B-to-B services arena, conversion isn't quite as clear; in fact, it's rather murky and often company-dependent.  To us, conversion means "hand-raising."  We "convert" someone when he/she has raised a hand and provided us with some basic information - name and email address, in most cases - as well as insightful behavioral information (pages viewed, time spent on site, key search terms, etc.)

But it starts with engagement.  Forrester defines engagement as the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence an individual has with a brand over time.  Our site was designed to promote a high-level of engagement; in fact, this blog is an engagement element, built to encourage visitors to spend more time with us and learn more about our services, solutions and people.

Back to metrics.  So, to come back to the answer to my colleague's question:  We analyze and measure the level of prospect engagement with the Website (time spent, pages viewed, lead source and/or search parameters) both prior to hand-raising and once in pipeline.  We do look at standard Website metrics (visitors, content, traffic sources, etc.) and use them to provide directional insight.  But it's more important for us to look at our pipeline and specifically the role the Website played in the education and consideration phases of those opportunities.  For example, we know that people who visit at least two pages in Services (one a drilldown), read two or more blog posts, and review at least one team member bio are more likely to raise their hands or be receptive to a follow-up phone call than those who peruse differently.   It's helped us not only prepare better for opportunities, but also prioritize our follow-on communications.

So for those B2B marketers out there - presuming you don't sell directly from your site, how do you define and measure Website success? 

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