Mark Royko + Associates

Every site owner wants one thing: a better return on their web site investment. In return for their time and money, they want more traffic, higher conversions, higher sales, and a greater audience share. They want their site to come up first on every search engine. They want eyeballs scanning their site 24 hours a day. In short, everyone wants to be a rock star.

But the online world can be a frustrating place, especially for small businesses that don't have a full time staff or large advertising budget to devote to web marketing. And to be fair, it is a bit overwhelming: There are so many variables, so much jargon, so much obscure information that the average web site owner doesn't have the first idea where to start. Should a small business invest in an Search Engine Optimization program? Should it buy advertising? Complete a redesign? And what about Facebook, Twitter feeds and other social networking options? In short, what are the keys to getting a better return on a small business website?

I'm going to spend the next several weeks trying to clarify some of these issues and whenever possible, use real world examples -- sometimes this site -- to show the theory, execution and results or a highly focused performance project.

It's my experience that most web site owners don't have a good understanding of how to evaluate their sites based on analytics, how to make design decisions based on metrics, how to promote their sites cost effectively, and how to manage the user experience to build positive outcomes. We'll address all of these issues as we move forward.

Here's what you can expect during this series: In the next article, we'll discuss how to evaluate a web site -- first by establishing site performance goals, and creating a focused map of how we'd like visitors to travel through the site. Next, we'll look at design -- not through the lens of taste and opinion, but by looking at hard numbers gathered through web analytics. Next, we'll talk about creating content, then move on to site promotion and SEO techiques. There's a lot here, so let's dive in.

If you're interested in finding out how we can help you get better performance from your web site, please contact us at 773-612-1343. We'd love to talk to you.