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One of the most common questions after creating a web site is, "How can I be successful?" I always hate to break it to them, but this should be the first question they should ask before even starting a web site design. However, after prodding them a little I find that in most cases what they really mean is "How do I measure my success?"
Most companies answer this question by saying, "It's the number of hits you get." I always respond, "Oh, you mean H.I.T.S." When they inevitably ask what I'm talking about I tell them that H.I.T.S. stands for "How Idiots Tally Success." They always seem at first to be offended, but then I explain it to them like this -- "Do you measure how successful your term paper is by how many times a person reads it?" I suppose you could, but chances are your term paper's success is based on the grade you receive, the comments that are given, and how much of it is deemed practical.
The same goes for a company web site. Measuring how successful the site is based on how many times different people visit it is almost worthless. I do not think that Joe Schmoe reloading the company page continuously to increase the number of hits is very valuable information. What is valuable is how many distinct individuals visit the site, how long they stay on each page, what they do on those pages, whether they actually purchase anything, and most importantly, whether they ever decide to come back.
Very slowly the industry is realizing that gathering this information allows them to continually improve and refine the web site to capture even more individuals. If you are trying to sell computers on your web site and visitors never seem to go to the ordering page, you obviously are doing something wrong. Either they can't find the page, they don't want to find the page, or they don't even know it exists. Regardless, the web site and/or promotional strategy needs changed to remedy this problem.
Until recently, software packages to gather these type of statistics were virtually non-existent. However, within the past couple years, several companies have developed software that closely tracks a visitor's progress through the web site. After you have finished your web site development, you should definitely consider purchasing such a product to determine how successful your web site is.
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