At Brilliance, we get excited about generating value for our customers. Building a great eCommerce site is exciting, but the real value is demonstrated AFTER the site has been launched.
At the completion of a project, we come back to the goals and forecast we laid out for the site. There are three stages of post-launch support needed to track our progress towards that goal and ensure that the site produces the desired result.
Stabilize
Right after a site goes live, there are stabilization tasks. No matter how well you test, there are going to be things that you need to verify after going live – because pre-launch tests, while critical, will represent an incomplete review of your site.During this stabilization period, we review how your organic traffic is changing following the go-live. We have a process to make sure pages that are drawing organic traffic are set up to continue to keep that traffic coming. We make sure Google is indexing your site accurately and respond quickly if there are any errors to keep your organic rankings at least as good as they were before launch. (In many instances, we have seen them get better following a new site launch!)
In addition to monitoring organic traffic, we check load times of pages. We want to know that the site is performing up to expectations.
We also confirm that site activities (like purchases, submissions, clicks, etc.) are tracking correctly in Google analytics. We ensure measurements of site traffic, conversion rate, average order size, and traffic sources are accurate. The better we can measure, the better we can make future recommendations.
This stage is a bit like a nurse monitoring a patient after a major procedure to track their vital signs and make sure they are improving. If there is an issue, we want to catch it early and respond quickly to make sure your website results are healthy.
As data from the site comes in, we compare it against our forecast. Is it matching up with what we expected? Reviewing this requires patience, as it will take some time to gather good data that can be analyzed. Not all of the benefits of your new site will be realized immediately.
Analyze
As data from the site comes in, we compare it against our forecast. Is it matching up with what we expected? Reviewing this requires patience, as it will take some time to gather good data that can be analyzed. Not all of the benefits of your new site will be realized immediately. If you aren’t on track with what we forecasted, we look to identify why. Do you not have enough traffic? Is your conversion rate lower than we expected? Are your repeat purchases lower than we expected? Typically, we will have better data to identify the problem and better tools to implement a solution than we had before your site launch.
We reflect on your overall organizational goals and how your eCommerce site can support those and we recommend solutions that have worked for other clients of ours.
Prioritize
During an eCommerce development project, priorities are chosen. There is often a backlog or wish list of things that weren’t included in the initial project (due to time or budget constraints) but are of interest. In addition, there are opportunities for continuous improvement – new features that will help make your company more efficient (i.e. adding a configurator to help your sales team quote a line of products) or improve your marketing efforts (i.e. better landing pages for your paid search campaigns or banners that follow you on every page on the site and repeat the marketing offer you saw on your ad).Identifying which task should be performed next depends on the diagnosis. Take your temperature and then prioritize and put a plan together for next steps. We help guide decisions toward priorities that have the most potential revenue, based on our past experience.
Just the Beginning
What we know to be true, is that our best clients, who see the greatest results online are investing in ongoing support. They are consistently looking for ways to improve and regularly asking “What can we do this month to improve our site?”
Don’t waste the investment you make on your eCommerce site. Your site gives you the tools you need to achieve great results, but ensuring it happens takes work. Create success by analyzing your data and putting a plan in place to leverage your eCommerce site and capitalize on the revenue.
Do you have a B2B eCommerce site that needs improving? Check out our 10 tips for building B2B eCommerce revenue. This email series will give you tips on driving more revenue through your site and enable you to get on a path of continuously improving results.
