Web/E-business /

Web site measurement: marketing, sales and service

By Ted Young
Network World Fusion Focus, 5/4/98

Continuing my series on the various ways to measure the effectiveness of your Web site, I'm moving on to aspects that are more difficult to measure: marketing, sales, and service.

The first and most important step is to determine the purpose or mission of the Web site, if you haven't done so already. This is crucial in deciding whether the site is meeting its expectations. Sites typically fall into one of these three types:

Promotional - Provides information about your products and services.
Adjunct to your existing products and services - Provides customer support or a help desk, or surveys customers to obtain feedback on specific issues. This can also include allowing customers to access their information, such as electronic banking.
Transactional - Sells products and services. This can be divided into two subtypes:
- Delivers the product or service on the Web site. For example, providing software through electronic delivery (downloading) or access to specific information such as financial statistics.
- Takes orders for the product or service. Fulfillment is done via other means, such asshipping clothes via UPS or taking registrations for training classes done in a physical training space. This covers anything that might be otherwise done by mail or a phone call.

How does your site fit into the above categories? Some may fall into several or all of the above types. Are there other aspects of your Web site that don't fit into these categories? A useful exercise is to mark the categories as primary and secondary, as this will help you stay focused on the true purpose of your site.

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