In part one of this series, I laid out a foundation for driving traffic to your web site. It started with the notion of identifying the users that come to your site. In this post, I will talk about a few methods for accomplishing this goal because knowing where your users are coming from will give you more insight into how your web site is actually being used. Your first "vision" for your web site is very likely not going to be the vision that your users espouse. Viewing patterns, usage patterns and page hits will vary dramatically from the original vision for the site. This doesn't mean that the site is a failure.
As Helmuth von Moltke stated, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." So it will be with your initial vision for your web site only let's call the enemy your users and not use such a harsh word. Once you get over the idea that you're right about your site's usage, you can begin to measure and adapt your site to better suit your users. Take your initial vision and use it as a baseline. Write down the answers to the following questions.
- How many hits per day do I expect?
- How long do I expect my users to stay on the web site?
- What do I expect my users to do on my web site?
- What information do I want each user to give me when they visit my web site?
- How many users will I need to see on my web site to get a single customer referral?
Start there. Later we'll add closure rates, A/B testing and other more advanced topics. If you are not sure of the answers to the above questions, that's ok. You can use your first iteration to develop your baseline but go into it knowing that appreciable results won't happen until you establish a baseline with which to compare against. So how do we do this?
Whenever I consult with a client about setting up a web site, I'm inevitably asked about how to use Twitter.com or Facebook.com in conjunction with their web site. This is a big topic so I am going to break it up into a couple of parts. First off, if you haven't read my thoughts on the