How do you measure up online? Part 2: business effectiveness

There are enough people tweeting endless quotes from people for me not to become one of them, but on the odd occasion a quote stays with me, and one of these is Einstein’s:

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

When you start to look at what to measure on your website or with your social media activity, you should choose carefully what will give the most relevance and meaning to the objectives you are trying to meet.

Measuring your website or your social media activity should not be a straightforward numbers game of visitors/fans/likes or follows; it is easy to spam these numbers, and you should be driving for quality interactions that if possible track to real revenue, or that at least show business momentum and success.

You might look at the number of leads being brought in from your online activity, or at the visible customer engagement on your online estate; you might look at the number of repeat customers you have.

Choose the right measures for your business that are not just empty traffic, but which reflect your developing relationships with prospects and customers and which are the most meaningful to you.

Whichever measures you choose, you should ensure that you build time into your schedule to review and learn from your progress on a very regular basis – whether that is daily or weekly – so that you can react and adjust to the information you are seeing, and that you continue to grow at a good pace.

In the last of this August series of blogs, I will be looking at how to maintain momentum once you are up and running. You can subscribe to this blog and be among the first to read it.