Table of Contents
So, you’ve just relaunched your website. It has a fresh new design, has incorporated some fancy AJAX and animation, and includes much more content than your old site. You take a sigh of relief, kick back your feet, and start enjoying the new visitors.
Sorry, the party’s not over yet.
Even though your site has been officially launched, you still need to see how well it works. For example, even though YOU think the navigation is easy to use, your site visitors may feel – and, more importantly, act – differently. Your fancy new animation may look terrific, but is it causing confusion and possibly deterring your visitors from a potential sale/conversion? These are reasons why you need to review your site’s analytics.
In a nutshell, analytics allows you to track how many people get to your site, where they go, and how they got there. These are all important statistics, so you understand more about your site visitors. Are they arriving at your site through another site or search engines? Which pages are being visited the most? Analytics provide all of this.
How can you get to see this behind-the-scenes work? The easiest method is through Google Analytics, which is free and only requires that you have a Google account (who doesn’t?) and the ability to add a little code to your site’s HTML.
Another excellent service called Crazy Egg provides a snapshot of a Web page, and then exactly where people are clicking on it. It not only shows links, but also all other areas, so if one non-linked area is getting a lot of clicks, you may want to think about incorporating a link there.
Bottom line – Congrats on your new site, but make sure you still keep watch to see where you can make it that much better.
So, you’ve just relaunched your website. It has a fresh new design, has incorporated some fancy AJAX and animation, and includes much more content than your old site. You take a sigh of relief, kick back your feet, and start enjoying the new visitors.
Sorry, the party’s not over yet.
Even though your site has been officially launched, you still need to see how well it works. For example, even though YOU think the navigation is easy to use, your site visitors may feel – and, more importantly, act – differently. Your fancy new animation may look terrific, but is it causing confusion and possibly deterring your visitors from a potential sale/conversion? These are reasons why you need to review your site’s analytics.
In a nutshell, analytics allows you to track how many people get to your site, where they go, and how they got there. These are all important statistics, so you understand more about your site visitors. Are they arriving at your site through another site or search engines? Which pages are being visited the most? Analytics provide all of this.
How can you get to see this behind-the-scenes work? The easiest method is through Google Analytics, which is free and only requires that you have a Google account (who doesn’t?) and the ability to add a little code to your site’s HTML.
Another excellent service called Crazy Egg provides a snapshot of a Web page, and then exactly where people are clicking on it. It not only shows links, but also all other areas, so if one non-linked area is getting a lot of clicks, you may want to think about incorporating a link there.
Bottom line – Congrats on your new site, but make sure you still keep watch to see where you can make it that much better.