Having a website and an online presence is an investment in your business so it stands to reason that you want to see a return on that investment.
ROI (Return on Investment) is a direct comparison between how much you invest, the return on your investment and how much you gain from that investment. It is all about the potential sales you could realistically bring in and deducting the cost of getting those sales to give you a net gain.
Why should you invest in your website? Look at all of your marketing plans, both traditional and internet and project the ROI on each of these investments, this way you can see which has the highest predicted ROI. While you are doing this, make sure you are thinking about the costs. A website is an initial investment to create or improve your existing site, while hiring a sales person and buying traffic for a site are ongoing costs.
With a website, do not scrimp on the budget as it is a very important investment in your business and you need to make a good impression, think about features rather than just the glamour as the features will help improve your ROI. The website is a 24/7 sales person at your company’s disposal, with great potential to bring in business day and night without having to pay commissions or even a salary.
There are many factors that can help or hinder a website’s ROI and need to be considered when your site is designed or re-designed. Make sure the website is about the target audience rather than you, the owner, and prioritise the products that your customers want to buy. While you are doing this make sure you stick to your ideals, if a competitor is doing something this does not mean that you have to. Does it fit with your company and your customers?
Make sure the website remains easy to use, is informative and is aimed at the correct audience. You need to have set goals so that you can manage and measure the performance and your ROI ongoing, allowing you to change your strategy over time.
Measuring the performance of your website is a key factor in showing a site’s ROI. What are the things that need to be measured? Traffic is of the utmost importance and this traffic needs to be targeted. Have you recorded the number of sales and the number of leads generated? There is no benefit from gaining an increase in traffic if you are not gaining any leads and sales from it. So, if you have gained the traffic, what is stopping them from filling in that web form or calling you? Feedback from customers and visitors to the site is also very useful as this lets you know that you are doing a great job or indeed highlights areas that need improvement if the feedback is negative.
It is very important to track the website statistics as without these numbers you cannot track a websites ROI meaning that you cannot prove that all your hard work has made an impact. If you are tracking the figures you can listen to the feedback and make simple, small changes to your site that will go to helping your sites ROI.
