An Internet Strategist Will Evaluate Your Analytics System

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This is the eighth and final article in an eight-part series which describes the role of an internet strategist in improving the website operations of a company or organization.

Actionable analytics are the lifeblood of any online operation. Without precise analytics, you will have no way of knowing whether or not you are accomplishing your goals for your internet operations. You will also not be able to perform tests to improve your operations so that your goals are accomplished sooner and more efficiently. And without actionable analytics, you will have knowledge, but your knowledge won’t result in any improvements to your online operations.

In many ways, I could have placed this article second in the current series, immediately after the first article about reviewing your goals for your internet operations, because analytics is the foundation of everything you do online.

1. In order to examine the sources of traffic to your website, your internet strategist will need web analytics.
2. Improvements to your landing pages will require web analytics so that your internet strategist can perform tests on various aspects of those landing pages.
3. While your internet strategists’ experience will allow her to make recommendations regarding the overall design of your website, it is your web analytics which will allow her to ensure that the changes she recommends result in greater traffic and more conversions rather than less.
4. Similarly, your internet strategist will rely upon his expertise to recommend changes to the content and copywriting of your website. But it is your web analytics which will demonstrate that the changes he recommends will help you accomplish your goals.
5. The search and navigation features, which are crucial to the success of your website, can also be quite problematic. Without a foundation of strong web analytics, your internet strategist will not be able to test the various recommendations she makes for changing these functionalities on your website.
6. And finally, web analytics are important for discovering and solving problems which may exist with our calls to action and the vehicles through which your visitors respond to those calls to action (your shopping cart, your newsletter signup form, etc.).

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An Internet Strategist Will Analyze Your Call To Action, Your Web Forms, and Your Shopping Cart

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This is the seventh article in an eight-part series which describes the role of an internet strategist in improving the website operations of a company or organization.

All of the elements of your website which we have discussed so far are designed to shepherd your visitor to the point where they will read and respond favorably to your call to action. Your website can be perfect in every other facet, but if it fails to ultimately persuade your visitors to take the desired action, then you have ultimately failed.

When your internet strategist began evaluating your efforts in the digital realm, she interviewed your organization’s key personnel to discover your objectives for your website and your other online operations. Strongly connected to your objectives are the various calls to action which appear on your website. In many ways, they are the culmination of your objectives. Your calls to action are asking your visitors to take actions which, in aggregate, will lead to the fulfillment of your objectives.

Your internet strategist, therefore, will analyze your call to action (purchase, lead generation, etc.) and the vehicles through which a website visitor can respond to your call to action (shopping cart, contact form, etc.).

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An Internet Strategist Will Scrutinize The Search And Navigation Features Of Your Website

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This is the sixth article in an eight-part series which describes the role of an internet strategist in improving the website operations of a company or organization.

Once a user reaches your website, unless what they want is on the first page they visit, the will need to find the page which includes what they are looking for. They can accomplish that either through using the internal search feature of your site or by using your site navigation.

If your user can’t quickly find what they are looking for, they will abandon your website (and most likely will never return). It is therefore very important that both your internal search functionality and your site navigation work as well as possible so that your user can easily find what they are looking for.

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An Internet Strategist Will Appraise the Content and Copywriting of Your Website

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This is the fifth article in an eight-part series which describes the role of an internet strategist in improving the website operations of a company or organization.

Copywriting is one of the most important aspects of a website but is often treated as an afterthought ("We’ll just use something from one of our brochures — that will be fine.").

But if we remember that the purpose of our website is to convey information, we’ll realize that good copywriting (through which information is conveyed) is invaluable.

And so, your internet strategist will read the content of your website and assess the quality of your writing.

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An Internet Strategist Will Assess the Overall Design of Your Website

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This is the fourth article in an eight-part series which describes the role of an internet strategist in improving the website operations of a company or organization.

Studies show that the typical website visitor will spend only a matter of seconds (the exact number of seconds is a matter of some debate; suffice it to say that it’s a short amount of time!) before deciding whether to spend more time exploring your website or abandon it for another site.

Much of the basis for that decision comes down to the visitor’s initial impression of your site. This points to the vital importance of your design. The design of your site is about all your visitor can react to in those initial seconds. If they believe your site is unprofessional in its appearance, they will quickly abandon it. If your layout confuses them (by placing common elements such as navigation, logos, etc. in nontraditional places on the page, for example), they will leave.

A well-designed site builds trust between you and your site’s visitors.

And so, to ensure that such confidence is established, your internet strategist will assess the design of your website on the basis of several criteria:

1. layout
2. web-standards compliance
3. color
4. imagery and product photography
5. typography

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