The One Thing To Do When Redeveloping A Web Site

Howdy. Hope your day is going well.
I had a meeting with a client for a redevelopment of his current web site. It’s a site that sells his particular product.
Part of our assessment is trying to establish what the web site has achieved in the past. We’ll take a good look at the statistics (if available) and review sales and enquiries generated.
Base from Which To Work
We do that for one very good reason. You see, we have to have a base from which to work.
With this particular client we placed a statistics program on his web site a week ago. In the meeting yesterday we took a look at the statistics with the client. He is receiving an average of 16 visitors a day.
When I asked him how many sales he was making from the web site he said “About 4 sales a day.”
He Wasn’t Actually Sure
Upon further questioning he actually wasn’t sure. He said that figure because that’s what emails he’d seen coming in from the sales page (both him and his wife run the site).
It’s Critical We Get The Exact Sales Figure
It’s critical we get the exact sales figures for the web site in the previous 6-12 months. And it’s critical because we need to show the client what benefit he has received from our work.
From my review of the client’s web site I’d think he’d only be generating 4 sales a week. There’s no way he’d be getting 4 sales a day. That’s a 25% conversion rate – and the site, from my experience, wouldn’t be achieving that.
If we didn’t have the benchmark, things would go along like this:
* We’d do our redevelopment and quadruple his visitor numbers (at least). His sales would go from 4 per week to 16 per week. That would be great.
* But he’d think he’d just spent $x on the redevelopment and gone down from 4 sales a day to just over 2.
In our eyes the site redevelopment would be a great success.
In the client’s eyes the site would be a huge failure.
So the 2 questions to ask when doing a redevelopment are:
1. What has the site achieved previously?
2. What would the site have to do for you to consider it a success?
Then when you’re work pays off you’ll have a well-informed and delighted client.
That’s my hint of the day!
Brendon