How do you know if your website content is actually any good or not? Do you have KPIs and targets in place to measure success or do you put the content up, sigh relief that it’s done and then leave it until the next update is required?
You’d be amazed at how many people don’t measure success, which is odd because we’ll measure traffic and return visits and whether we’ve made sales on our site. Content just seems to be a given, it’s there but just the fact that it’s there is ok for us.
Have a think about the purpose of each type of content on your website because it’s not all the same:
– Homepage content is to grab visitor attention and encourage people to delve deeper into the site
– Product information is there to make sales happen
– Blogs & guides are educational and should encourage newsletter sign up, sharing and repeat visits
– Contact information – well I don’t need to tell you that purpose!
Once you’ve broken down your site you can start to put measures into place to encourage improvements and allow you to see if they’ve worked.
Some examples are…
- Homepage content (bounce rate – high is bad, where do they go next, did they visit pages you’re directing them to?)
- Product information (how many pages before a sale is made, does page positioning or imagery impact sales?)
- Blogs & guides (what are popular topics or formats, how many newsletter sign ups, what content is shared, does your blog get high return visit rates?
- And are people contacting you? If so what is their preferred method?
This may seem like teaching your gran to suck eggs but I’ll bet most people aren’t doing this on a quarterly basis. If you want to be really thorough then pick your key measures or areas of focus and look at the numbers each month. Remember you should be regularly updating your content so make sure that it’s with a purpose and actually has a positive impact other than helping your search rankings!
