Site owners usually associate high search engine rankings with the success of their web site. Web promotion efforts are targeted towards achieving top positions on the search engines for specific keywords or key phrases. While the importance of good search engine rankings cannot be undermined, holding that as a parameter to gauge your site's success is a wrong approach.
So what exactly defines the success of a web site? The most important thing to remember is that a site's commercial success depends on the ability to understand and analyze customer behavior. Traffic was once considered an important index to measure the success of a site, but experience has proved that more than the traffic itself; it is the right kind of traffic and the conversion rate that is important to sustain your web presence.
Company websites can be B2C or B2B sites. Success could mean different things to both these types of sites. Analyzing the traffic to your site can help you make strategic decisions to increase the overall ROI and this is more crucial than measuring SERP rankings.
For a retail site, conversion rate is most important while a B2B i.e. a Business-to-Business site has to be reliable, fast, and easy to maneuver.
On a B2C site, the entry and exit pages provide a useful insight to make strategic changes to the site design. An entry page is the first page a visitor gets to see on your site. This is not necessarily the homepage of the site. Remember, many a times, first impression is the last impression. If the landing page makes the right impression, chances are you have a potential sale at hand. Likewise, exit pages are the pages where the visitors are abandoning your site. Referrers too are important, as this data provides you the information regarding your presence on the World Wide Web i.e. how the visitors to your site have been able to find you and where they are coming from.
Many B2B sites don't like to invest in search engine marketing, which, as per the Search Engine Strategies 2002 Conference, is a mistake since B2B revenue is predicted to far exceed B2C revenue in the very near future. Companies should treat their B2B websites as mini trade exhibits. They are also probably the only windows for a purchasing agent to procure supplies from you.
An important metric of success for both types of sites is that the visitors to your site come back again and again. You may want to find ways to encourage your visitors to bookmark your site. Since key performance metrics would differ from company to company, investing in the right Web Metric tool is imperative. Only then would you be able to make cost effective and strategic changes to your site and enjoy continued success in terms of profitable ROI.
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