We seem to be obsessed with numbers and targets, but what actual use are these? And do we really understand them?

With so much effort being put into communications, it’s a sound idea to measure what they actually achieve. Just taking internet activity, there are many statistics that you can monitor, from web site visitor numbers to page views, click-throughs and bounce rates (where a visitor leaves a web page without exploring further), but what do they mean?

For any business that wants to sell or promote itself over the internet, figures are useful. Sites that sell products online can measure success directly through sales figures and profit generated, but brochure sites aiming to attract customers to call or email are not so easy to measure.

The number of visitors or page views alone are not that useful if those visits are not from your target market. Thousands of visits are pointless if nobody ever responds, whereas low numbers of enquiries leading to large amounts of business are valuable.

So we have to be careful when we analyse numbers because they don’t always reveal the quality of performance. Delving deeper to find out if we are attracting our target audience, monitoring how many web visits convert into actual enquiries and calculating the value of business obtained from web site responses give us a real indication of success.

If we do this with all our communications, we’ll have a better idea of how well they are performing.

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. . . for information, for a phone number, for an email address, for details of how to buy from a web site. Trouble is, it’s not just a minute. If I add up all the minutes I spend looking for information that should be obvious, it’ll probably total hours or days.

Perhaps it isn’t surprising that some web sites are built like a maze, as presenting information is not formally taught to everyone. Does that matter? It does when a potential customer abandons your web site and visits a competitor in search of what they could not find. Sometimes details as simple as a phone number or email address are buried away or FAQ pages give no real help.

I’m quite a patient person, but there is a limit to how much time I will spend looking for the information I need. It also makes me question the professionalism of the business behind a web site. Do they really know what they’re doing? Maybe I should try someone else.

Just presenting basic information where it can be found easily can make a big difference to the success of a web site. Believe me, it’ll keep me there and could even persuade me to buy.

When we go into a greengrocer’s shop (or a supermarket) and see tired, dried-up fruit and vegetables, we usually pass by and go in search of a store with fresh produce. Well, if your web sites, blogs or other forms of online presence serve as shop windows for your business, it’s important to make sure they’re as freshly dressed as any food shop.

That’s not to say it’s always easy when you’ve got a million other things to do, but it’s good practice to remove or alter out-of-date information or offers and to correct anything that is wrong, such as prices.

The more we change our ‘shop windows’, the more passers-by are likely to take notice, not to mention search engines and the non-human agents at work on the internet.

It needn’t take long and is more a discipline than anything else to note down everywhere you have a presence – not just your own site and blogs, but profiles and other information on networking and other sites.

And just to prove that we’re practising what we preach, that’s what we’re doing at the moment.

Robert Zarywacz