Aside from the most common and obvious methods of measuring the success of your website, there are also other aspects that you must take into consideration.
This is a continuation of a previous article: 10 Tips to Becoming a Successful Webmaster
So you have a website. What do you think of it? How do you know it is something to be proud of? When it comes to determining if one should be satisfied with or proud of one's own website or not, a webmaster generally looks towards certain things such as visitor statistics, revenue, and visitor interactivity with the website. You should also know that these things alone do not define the success of a website. In reality, success can be subjective. Linking it to concrete things such as popularity or profit, for example, does not change that. In this article, I will cover some alternative and perhaps unconventional (yet, effective) things to look at when determining the "success" of your website.
1) Fulfilling your Website's Mission
In my previous article, I highly emphasized the need of you to have a clear purpose or object for your website. How are you setting out to meet this objective? Do you think you have met it already? Are you close to meeting it? Do you think you have done enough, or still have room to improve? And most importantly, where are your (long-term) plans from here to either further meet that objective or a new one?
Mind also that a "new" objective could be simply as maintaining the current level of your site, but also mind that continuous innovation is a must to keep your site/brand/company/whatever from starting to feel outdated, old, or unexciting to your visitors or customers.
2) Visitor Enthusiasm
Sure people are visiting your site. Sure they are interacting with it. But how enthusiastic are they in doing so? Do your visitors interact with your site because they simply choose to, because they are excited to, or because they feel like they are forced to? Don't forget to not only see the numbers and statistics of your visitors, but also try to understand the meanings and motivations behind different results.
3) Your Website's Uniqueness
You should also compare your website to other websites and competitors out there. Is your site different, unique, and stands out from the others? If yes, then good. No? Then that's something you ought to work on. Making your website stand out to visitors is very important not only in brand recognition, but also in that your website cannot take a role of leadership if it does what every other site does.
4) Negative Feedback and What You Do With It
What if your website is getting a lot of negative feedback? Well, then you have work to do. What if you don't get much? Well, seek it out, ask for opinions, find skeptics. A common misconception about negative feedback from a disgruntled visitor or customer is that it's bad, that it hurts your website. In fact, you should think of it as a blessing whenever you read or hear a complaint, a negative review, or simply a bug report. If you listen to negative feedback, do your best to correct the situation, and continue to accept and act on future feedback, then you are taking advantage of opportunities to improve your website. If there's one way you want to improve your website is to listen to feedback, especially the bad stuff. Learn from it, and be an opportunist when it comes to bettering your website. You just have to understand that you are not the king (or queen) of the world just because you think your website is all that. You will make mistakes, it's a question of whether you accept them and correct them or not that measures how successful your site is.
On that note, if you don't consider your website to be "successful" in one way or another up to this point, then find where to make the necessary corrections or changes. By examining your site through these lenses (and, of course, the common ones of popularity, revenue, etc.) you can make your own "negative feedback" and work towards bettering such aspects. I find myself feeling like I have won a small victory each time I find and fix a mistake or glitch before a visitor reports it.
What other ways do you measure your website's success? Post your take in the comments below.
