Step 6 – The road to success is not a straight line
This is finally the last part of this series, it took longer to write than I initially thought but I hope you’ve found it helpful.
I remember once hearing a phrase that made a lot of sense to me: “going from start to finish in a straight line takes a lot of luck, but going through the winding road until the finish line takes a genius”. This is true for creating successful websites, with one additional complexity: the finish line is a moving target. In this section, I’m going to assume you’re a genius and not just an incredibly lucky person.
There is a phrase by Peter Drucker that has been stuck in my head since the first time I heard it: “You can’t manage what you don’t measure”, so the last step of creating a successful smartphone website is being able to measure the performance of your site against the established goals.
One of the easiest ways of measuring the performance of your site is by using an analytics tool, like Google Analytics. Setting up an account and installing the code on each page is a very simple task in DotNetNuke, and for a detailed step by step you can read this blog. The blog was written for an older version of DotNetNuke but the steps are still valid.
The information that becomes available when using analytics software will help you understand how your visitors are using your website, what they’re looking for and how you can deliver that to them in a more efficient way. Most importantly, you will have more information about how to convert prospective customers into buyers.
Tracking Visitor Behavior
Assuming you’ve already configured Google Analytics in your DotNetNuke smartphone website and that you have a few weeks of data, you can check two pieces of information: a) top landing pages, and b) top exit pages. Reviewing those reports will give you a good starting point on what is working on your site and what is not.
Goals and Funnels
Google Analytics’ goals and funnels are a great way to measure the performance of your website. In GA, a goal is a page in your website that serves as a conversion for your website; a good example is a thank you page after a user places an order in an e-commerce site. A funnel represents the path you defined for your visitors to get from one section on your site, maybe the homepage, to the goal.
If you want to learn how to setup goals and funnels, please visit this page.
Once you’ve verified that the goals you created are working, you can go to the reports section to get information about how you are losing site visitors. You can isolate and understand where the weak spots are in your flow.
It will take time to build this information and you shouldn’t expect changes to happen overnight. But as time goes on and you obtain more information about your visitors, you can systematically take steps to improve the flows in your website and achieve better results.
I hope you enjoyed this blog series and you have the opportunity to apply some of this information. Please use the comment section to leave me feedback and any questions or comments you may have.
