Let me tell you a little story to illustrate my point:

A good friend of mine, John, tells an interesting story from when he worked as a business consultant in Melbourne, Australia.  During this time, he worked with a client who owned a car audio business. 

One of the first things John investigated on his first day on the job was the marketing expenditure of the company.  On talking with the owner of the business he discovered that the business was spending many thousands of dollars (the majority of its marketing budget) on radio advertising.  He asked the business owner how many sales resulted from the radio advertising on a weekly basis and was promptly informed that the business owner had absolutely no idea.

John then implemented a rudimentary measurement system whereby every customer who came to the counter to purchase some product was asked the question, “How did you hear about us?”  The answers to this question were recorded on a simple chart located beside the till.  After two weeks of careful measurement both John and the business owner were shocked to find that only two sales had occurred as a result of the radio advertising!

John's first recommendation to the business owner was that they scrap the radio advertising immediately.  On further analysis of the results, they also discovered that the majority of the sales over the two week period had resulted due to the location of the store.  People noticed the store on a daily basis because it was located next to a busy street that people used to drive to work and back again.  John’s next recommendation was that they develop some better store signage and put some further effort into their window displays.

The resulting changes made a huge impact on the business and they all occurred as the result of some simple measurement!

So … how can we apply the moral of this story to our websites?  If we want to improve our website results we must carefully measure the different aspects of our website's performance to discover what is working, and what is not working.  Makes sense, right?

The great news is this.   Measurement with a website is amazingly simpler than measurement in the real world!  The invention of the computer has made possible levels of measurement that were only dreamed about by previous generations.  On a website, provided you have the right systems (for example – a system created by Zeald!), absolutely everything can be automatically tracked and measured by the computer!

Make sure your website has powerful tracking and measurement systems in place.  You should be able to access critical information about the results of your website at the click of a button.  If you want to achieve amazing website results, great measurement is absolutely vital!