Proving Web site value: it's more than a pretty (user) face.

Gone are the days when Web sites were considered an additional business expense that could be paid for with excess money left over in the marketing budget. Today, Web sites are oftentimes the single most cost-effective business initiative as well as the main tool to disseminate the company's brand and message.

Too often, however, companies struggle to understand how to effectively measure the success of their Web initiatives. As with many key business efforts, executives know they need a Web presence, but they aren't always sure how to make the most out of it, or more important, how to measure whether a company is achieving a positive ROI from its online presence.

Measuring Success--It Starts From The Beginning

While many companies are eager to measure the success of their Web sites the minute they "go live," the important steps for measuring success begin well before the company logo appears on a Web browser's computer screen. It is vital that companies start with a proven process and, although it is sometimes important to be unique and creative, always be willing to learn from patterns that have worked for others and that have resulted in success.

The first step is to determine what you are and what you are ultimately trying to accomplish with your Web initiative. Whether it's increasing sales, increasing brand awareness, training or any other aspect of business, keep in mind that online goals need to tie in with overall short-term and long-term company goals. A common mistake is to strive to achieve the holy grail of Web sites, with full customer personalization, total back-end system integration and an award-winning design, on the first attempt. Trying to accomplish too much at once generally leads to an over-extension of resources and, ultimately, failure.

Rather than looking for the one, all-encompassing solution, it's best to break initiatives into short and attainable phases. By focusing on phases that are relatively quick and easier to implement, you can more readily achieve a few instant successes. These successes often act as the catalyst needed to help gain the support and trust of management, proving that the Web is indeed a medium that can produce measurable results. This approach will likely open the door to additional management-supported Web initiatives.

While some companies think of the Web as a one-way street for a company's message, a key and often overlooked component of an effective Web site is the exchange of information between the site and the user. When developing a site, it is important to understand not only what you want to provide users, but also what you want to receive from them. In developing your site you should be able to answer the following questions:

* Are you attracting new people to your site?

* Do you know who is coming to your site and for what purpose?

* Are users finding what they need?

* What is the health of your lead qualification process?

* How proficient are you at converting leads to sales?

* What behavior indicates that a visitor is ready to buy?

* What attributes describe your best customers?

By answering these questions, you will be able to collect a baseline about your current users, their needs and general traffic patterns. These data can be used in your Web initiatives, providing a metric for measuring business goals and aligning communications campaigns. Once the metrics are defined, solutions can be developed that will not only add value and help you accomplish your business goals, but will enable you to justify your expense. The following are examples of solutions that can serve as best practices when pursuing these types of initiatives.

Save Money With Self-Service Customer Support

Self-service has become an essential part of everyday life. Your ATM card, do-it-yourself checkout lines at the grocery store, airline kiosks and the quick-pay at the gas pump are all more convenient. So, why not extend this convenience to your customers online?

Companies are finding they are able to save time and money by enabling users to manage applications themselves through online self-service. Enabling users to manage applications themselves not only frees up customer support resources, it also enables them to serve their customers round-the-clock and more efficiently. With the introduction of this type of self-service initiative, customers are able to set up and manage all aspects of their accounts, rather than calling customer support for assistance. Now, customer support representatives are free to focus on more mission-critical issue resolutions.

Make Money By Targeting A Captive Community

Listening to your customer base and responding to their needs is one of the best ways to ensure a good response from any e-commerce initiative. By targeting a loyal community, like your customer base, the initial fears that face many e-commerce start-ups such as having no customers, the difficulty of brand building and experiencing high advertising costs are diminished. Customers will respond with great enthusiasm and be more committed to the brand when they realize their requests are being met.

In addition to meeting the needs of your customers, an e-commerce initiative is a great way to use the Internet to save money on paper catalog costs and phone orders.

Reduce Operational Business Costs--Secured Multilevel Internal Extranet

Using Extranets is another cost-effective way of handling the day-to-day business of an organization. A company that makes thousands of shipments to its satellite offices could enable the local offices to manage information themselves and retrieve it from the Extranet, helping ensure that the information is not out-of-date.

By offering several levels of access, from a marketing manager to a sales engineer, the Extranet can provide point-and-click global distribution of a company's product or service. Administrators can create new pages, upload files and documents and assign privileges on multiple levels. In addition to ensuring that the teams are using the most up-to-date information, the real cost savings comes from reducing shipping, packaging and other costs associated with global distribution, and the hours saved by employees who manage the distribution of individual requests.

There is no shortage of options available when defining and deploying Web initiatives. The key driver to any successful rollout is crafting those initiatives around well-defined business goals and objectives.

The End Result--Proving The Value Of Your Online Presence

Once you have created a Web site that is aligned with your business goals, and closely examined user behavior to develop a site that produces a free exchange of information, you are now set to close the gap between those user patterns and company goals. The trick is, how do you measure whether your Web initiative is successful?

When measuring the effectiveness of your site, it is important to consider the metrics that will be used to track the success of your past and future Web initiatives. When determining the metrics for measurement, keep in mind the following:

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* Concentrate on measuring the vital key variables rather than the numerous trivial variables a Web site could produce.

* Measurement should be linked to key business drivers and overall company goals.

* Measurement should be a mix of past, present and future initiatives to ensure the organization is concerned with all three perspectives.

* Measurement needs to have targets or goals established that are based on research as opposed to arbitrary numbers.

Once you identify the key metrics that will be used in your assessment, it is important to quantify the results of your initiatives. For example, when you launched a new customer service Extranet, what change occurred in the call center volume? Did it meet expectations? If you added a new lead tracking database, did overall sales or grade A inquiries increase? What would 100 additional leads per week mean to your bottom line?

By following these important steps, the mystery of proving your Web site's value can finally be solved, and you can be confident that your new online presence is indeed helping you achieve your short- and long-term company goals.

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Thomas Obrey is co-founder and chief operating officer of PixelMEDIA (www.pixelmedia.com), which provides its customers with strategy, design and implementation services for their Web, multimedia and IT initiatives.