How Can You Tell if Your Web Site Is Doing You Any Good? 

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Such counts can be misleading, for a number of reasons, but sometimes it's all you have. You may be able to measure orders that come it via email through the site. You may examine correspondence generated by the site to see if the points you make are hitting home and getting the reactions you want. Often, the measures must be indirect and inferential. Are your general sales up? Are your phone bills down? Are you printing and mailing less expensive literature, because people can look at it at your website? Are you tossing out, and reprinting less literature, because the printed material can be more general when details can be updated on the site every day for interested prospects?

Consider this brief case study: A long-ago associate reports that his small business is flourishing after twenty years of struggle, and he attributes progress largely to his use of the Internet. His company makes very special manufacturing equipment for a high-tech industry, and sells supplies to customers on a continuing basis. His profit depends on selling those supplies, and those sales depend on the success of his customers in using his stuff effectively...so his primary product, really, is knowledge. He set up a website on which he freely gives away most of his knowledge. He writes articles, and he gets other experts to write articles on topics in which he is not a specialist. He also set up a mailing list that allows the few thousand people in his industry worldwide to ask detailed questions, and get expert responses from others in the trade.

(A "mailing list" allows interested parties to receive letters from others with a common interest in a particular topic, and to post letters in that will be forwarded automatically to everybody else on the list.)

He promotes the website and mailing list in all his correspondence and advertising...not just on the net, but through all of the channels available. Does he get customers via the website or mailing list? No, he says, not directly. The great advantage he gains is access to people in the industry. His name and capabilities are now known worldwide among people in his special niche. When he calls a prospect to make an appointment for a sales presentation, chances are that the key people are pleased to talk with him. Sales have increased significantly. Isn't he giving away the store by telling all he knows freely on the web? No, because every reader's situation is slightly different, and while the published knowledge is necessary, it is insufficient for operation of a specific system in the reader's special environment. His ability to set up systems still exceeds that of his readers, and it's far less expensive for them to hire his help than it is to replicate his knowledge and experience.

There's an interesting twist on the mailing list, also. He discovered that a lot of the people who might participate in his list are extremely nervous about airing their problems and/or ignorance in public. It's a tight little industry, and they don't want competitors to figure out that they are having problems with which they need help. He found list-handling software that would automatically strip the identification of the message sender, so that the source of the message couldn't be traced. (Yes, he could have done this manually, moderating the list himself, but he didn't want to spend the time.) The method works fine, and his correspondents do loosen up enough to exchange useful information -- but he says that to his surprise, the practice is highly controversial, and has involved him in time-wasting discussion. There are purists among us who are deeply offended by the idea of anonymous posts, and they can be extremely aggressive in trying to enforce their views on others. It isn't a big problem for him, because he's careful to weed out negative comments about products and people, but the matter is just one of those issues that cannot be settled by reason, and will always be with us. His measure of the effect of the website is that "business is good."