The moment that a website is launched is exciting. Something new has been published onto the Web. We are happy with how it looks. We are excited to make it available to the world. This is all great, but this is not the end, this is only the beginning.

Once a website is live is when the real fun begins. We will start to get actual users. People with varying intentions and needs will be stumbling through our pages and trying to find what they are expecting to find on the website. Quite often, on this first surge of real, live traffic, we will find many ways to improve the user experience.

We might find that a particular page is pulling in more traffic than expected, or a particular feature is getting a lot more attention than we thought it would. We might find that an obscure piece of information is becoming the drawing point to get incoming links and targeted traffic. There are lots of things that can be learned by watching the behaviors of our website traffic.

After getting all sorts of good traffic data to work with we will want to start making adjustments. We want to now figure out ways to capitalize on what is working and fix what isn’t working. Many times the adjustments don’t need to be drastic. Small things can make big improvements when we understand our traffic well.

Pages that are getting good traffic should be analyzed to find ways to convert that traffic into leads and customers. Pages that aren’t getting users and traffic should be rethought, maybe they could be improved to make them perform better.

Over time the goal is to optimize the performance of any website to get the most out of it as possible. Too many times a website is released into the wild and left without any proper tuning or optimization, no followup can be a bad thing. There are too many opportunities that can be missed when this takes place.

At a minimum, we feel that every website should have somebody behind it keeping an eye on the following:

  • Traffic and conversions – where are visitors coming from, what are they doing while on the website, and are we turning them into leads and customers?
  • Website performance – is the website loading quickly for the users? If not, what can be done to improve this?
  • Search engine visibility – are people able to find the website when looking for information and services that it offers? If not, how can this be improved?

If we can continually revisit and take action on these items on a scheduled basis we will be able to keep on track with ongoing optimizations.

If there is nobody behind the wheel with your website regarding these three items, you might want to talk to us at 701-478-1111 or visit absolutemg.com/contact. Also, be sure to check out this original article and other similar articles at fargowebdesign.com.