Evaluating websites

It is important that you regularly evaluate the success of your website to better understand the needs of your users and continue to improve it.

The Content Management System (CMS) should allow you to print off regular reports on the use of your website – check with your web developer how to do this. The following should be evaluated at least once a month:

Unique visitors – An individual who visited the website. If someone visits more than once, they are counted only the first time they visit.

Number of visits – A visit is a series of actions that begins when a visitor views their first page from the server and ends when the visitor leaves the site.

Page views – Someone clicking on any page is known as a ‘page view’.

Most popular pages – The pages with the highest number of visits.

Most popular downloaded documents – The documents that have been downloaded the most times.

In addition you should have a feedback option on the site to help you get more qualitative user feedback on an ongoing basis. You could also consider regularly surveying users about specific aspects of the site to find out what they do or don’t like.