Does your Website have problems?  Maybe it does and you don’t know about it because it’s not active enough.  Not having enough traffic to your site can hide broken funnels as statistical anomalies, or maybe not even funnel people down them at all.

As you know, here at Serengeti Communications, we’re a fairly fit bunch with one or two exceptions.  I, myself, am a recent convert having started my ‘get fit’ regime in December 2006.  Before I started running and playing soccer, I’d had the occasional bout with a gym, and had experienced some mild knee discomfort, but nothing more.  Once I actually started running, I started to really get knee pain, so I cut back and let my knees heal up.  A few months ago, I started getting some aches in my calf during and after soccer.  I’d leave it for a few weeks, then start up again, and back would come the pain.  This continued up until 2 weeks ago, when I played a game with no discomfort whatsoever.  “Great” I thought, everything’s fine.  Then, the next game my calf tore and I’m now looking at 3 weeks on crutches.

So, what could tear on your site and leave you on electronic crutches?  Maybe it’s your shopping cart?  Maybe it’s your contact form?  Maybe it’s your product pages?  It could be any of them, and until your site truly gets some exercise / high traffic volume, you’re not going to find out.

How can you be prepared for it?  Well, you can run automated testing packages.  They’ll help you test load, and ensure that your site flow runs the way you expect it to.  “The way you expect it to”… that’s the key phrase.  Users typically don’t use a site the way that an architect or developer expects them to, so automated testing systems won’t point out unexpected problems.  But, that’s where analysis of your data comes into play.

In running, soccer, and other forms of exercise, advice that’s typically given is to make sure that you listen to what your body is saying, the same is true of your site.  Listen to what it’s saying, examine your logs, pore over your analytics systems, and avoid that long term pain.

Filed under: Analytics, Reputation Management on Monday, May 5th, 2008 by Simon Heseltine |
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