Forum Moderators: phranque
It's difficult to compare different sites unless they are both selling the same products, so I was wondering what the rest of you are using as a yardstick.
I don't get many requests to optimize non-profit sites, so I typically use gross sales as an indicator of success. There are many variables, page views, position, conversion rate, the infamous "hits" but out of all of them, I've found that nothing indicates success, (and a positive reflection on the SEO) like an increase in sales. Granted, increase conversion rates and unless you lose lots of traffic due to position, sales increase. As seos, we don't tend to lose lots of ground in the SERPS anyway, (we wouldn't stay in business) so increasing conversion rates is an easy way to increase sales.
I've had a good number of clients that insist they need to rank in the top three for a particular phrase. You get them there and sales are static. However, by targeting 200 other terms, (and getting top ten results) you increase sales by 50%, or 200% and suddenly, the light goes on. Hey, maybe it's not all about traffic, it's about targeted traffic that converts to sales.
I used to watch traffic constantly, now I ask my clients how sales are doing. This reinforces the idea that it's not all about position, but rather that elusive green stuff that makes people want webites to begin with. :)
Yeah, it's nice to point to a string of number one results, but I'd rather be able to say I increased a site's gross sales by 200%, or 500%.
How do you measure success?
Process criteria can be such things as Page views, rankings in Search Engines, incoming links, newsletter signips, number of enquiries, awards etc).
Outcome criteria are such things as sales, enquiries that convert into sales etc.
Outcome criteria are of course the only thing that counts in the bottom line. But they are at the end of a long line. You cant do much with process critria performance than say you met the targets or not. They dont tell you WHY.
Process criteria are valuable in that they can help you determine HOW and WHY you achived the outcomes, and you can work on imporving things based on process indicies at an ealier stage. Especialy with fast speed of the Web, often by the time you get to evaluate outcome variables it's too late.
So process criteria can help you develop a site, much better than if you focus only on outcomes. They help you answer the WHY questions. By themsleves, outcome variables dont, and usually by that stage, it's too late...
How about an equivalent to your "Outcome criteria" for non-commercial sites? Any ideas?
just a few ideas that we use for our info sites
1. positive reviews in newspapers/mags
2. sign ups to your information email newsletter
3. incoming non-solicited links from good authoritative sources. (ie citations in other sources)
Im sure there are more.
Number 1 and 3 are more subjective but can be quantified with well defined definitions. They are generally more qualitative in nature, and you need qualitative research principles to determine them. Just becuase the "goals" are more complex or qualitative, does not make them less important.
I think its harder to identify the "worth" of an information site (say The Onion vs the UN site), than it is with commercial sites (amazon, ebay, Yahoo, Google) as they need "qualitative" assessments rather than quantitative criteria (subscribers, profits, sales etc)
