What Website Data Can Do for You
As arts marketers, we are constantly trying to do more with less and be as efficient as possible with our time and money. Website data offers invaluable insight into your relationship with your audience and empowers smart, data-driven decision-making in three key ways.
I. BE FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE
Think about all the money that revolves around the website. How much do you spend on advertising? 99% of your paid marketing directs users to visit the website. How much do you spend on website design and maintenance? Think about not just the dollars and cents of a redesign, but the time spent on content development and other maintenance. What percentage of your sales are made online? These days it’s the vast majority. The website is the junction between all of these investments and revenue.
Deeply understanding the website—both its high-performing areas and those that require optimization—is critically important to organizational success in the digital age. While it can be challenging to show a direct return on investment (ROI) for the website and analytics, a good user experience can raise your website’s conversion rate by 200%. Website data enables you to spend more efficiently and convert audiences more effectively.
II. BE MISSION-CENTRIC
Your website is one of the key ways you interact with your current and prospective audience. Particularly for new audiences, the website is the first experience they will have with your organization that you 100% own and control.
We know from personal experience that if we love something enough, we will grit our teeth through less-than-perfect digital and analog experiences. But that is not true of newer audiences. For them, that first impression is critical. 88% of users are less likely to return to a website after a bad experience.
If our goal is to cultivate audiences for the arts, then in this day and age, creating great digital experiences on your website is crucial to that mission. We should look to website data to understand how users are interacting with our website and test ways to reduce friction and make the experience more welcoming and engaging.
III. BE EFFICIENT
You are constantly juggling various requests and projects related to the website. How important is the mobile version of the site? How impactful is that homepage banner? Will people read this blog post? Website data can help you determine what to prioritize, or even what to let go of.
LEAN INTO DATA-DRIVEN DECISION-MAKING
The data you can gather on website performance is invaluable to our success as arts administrators. It helps us tackle projects that matter, make smart investments that drive revenue, and cultivate audiences for the arts.
READY TO LEVERAGE YOUR WEBSITE DATA?
Let’s talk about harnessing your data to meet revenue goals and fuel audience loyalty and growth.
