Thank you to all attendees of my seminar – “Optimizing Your Website For Profitability” – hosted by the Alliance Small Business Development Center.  I think there were about thirty-five in all.

• First, I’d like to apologize that I was unable to cover the search engine optimization portion.  In the future, I would love to present a seminar covering only search engine optimization.
• I received a lot of great, constructive feedback from the attendees that I will be definitely implementing.  Sometimes getting better involves swallowing a lot of pills.
• It appeared that it would also be beneficial to do a workshop in which attendees develop a web analytics strategy for their online presence.
• I will be writing up an analysis of the industry survey that I administered.  Thanks to all who participated.
• Lastly, there was a nice write up in today’s edition of the “News from the Alliance” newsletter.

“Do you know how many potential customers can’t find what they need on your website?” These and other thought provoking questions were posed at the most recent Economic Survivor seminar at the Alliance SBDC. Web analytics expert Dustin Wallace of Thrivalytics went on to describe a goal driven process for continually improving any company’s online presence.

Just as a storeowner needs to listen carefully to customers, businesses with websites are afforded numerous opportunities to identify client needs. Informed and strategic usage of Google Analytics and other web tools can create a virtuous cycle, tailoring the site to customer needs. Wallace reeled off a number of strategies and tricks-of-the trade for getting inside the mind of the web surfer. One example – take a look at how the search bar on your site is used and what results come up with these queries.

Bottom line: Now that you have invested a lot of time and money to build and maintain your website, is it paying off the way it should? How do you know? Why not find out?