What Data Should You Be Collecting On Your Website?

My friend Janeson Keeley of JTK Web Designs is writing an article for the Valley Business Front magazine and she asked me this question for her article: “What data should businesses be collecting on their website?”

Here’s my answer.

From the outside, looking in…
The thing I see missing from nearly EVERY business website in the region… is a simple opt-in form that captures name and email. The opt-in forms that I do see tend to be WAY too long, asking for way too much unnecessary info too early in the sales process.

The fact is that if your opt-in form asks for more than a name and email then your conversion rate goes down with every additional bit of data you ask for.

The key is to get only the minimum information you need to start communicating with your new site visitor / prospect. Then you can ask for more details after they are engaged with your product or service.

The next data they need to be collecting… comes from those visitors who have opted-in by giving their name and email. One of the best data collection tools that I LOVE to use is the online survey. It lets you ask open-ended questions that get your site visitors talking to you.

The best questions to ask are: “What is your biggest frustration when dealing with _________?” I also ask it this way: “What are your three biggest frustrations… or what is your most burning question about_________?”  This gets your prospect to reveal what they feel most strongly about regarding the subject / product / service / niche your business is involved in.

The answers to these questions are pure gold because not only do you now know exactly how to server your prospects best, what products to sell, what services to provide… but you also know what language to use to sell it them.

Survey tools let you gather this info quickly and easily and it even tabulates the results for you. Once you see a common theme emerge from the answers then you know where to focus your efforts and why.

From the inside, looking out…
The data that businesses need to be collecting is website stats so they can evaluate traffic, sources, content, effectiveness, conversion rate, etc. Gathering this info lets you tweak your online efforts to continually improve conversion rates. Split-testing, multi-variate testing, and Taguchi testing are incredibly powerful methods for testing elements on a website to see what combination gets the best results. When you know this then you can eliminate the guess-work in site design, content and offering.

That’s probably more than you wanted but I feel strongly about this subject. One of the best books on the subject of testing is: Always Be Testing by Bryan Eisenberg & John Quarto-vonTivadar. It’s the complete guide to Google’s Website Optimizer.

Hope that helps.
Cheers,
Brian