Like any business, websites, once developed, takes a life of its own. For a site to survive, it must continue to evolve and adapt to the needs of its market.
Big companies go through a complex process of site evaluation: their websites are evaluated against the objectives that was set forth in the development process and its specific and overall impact in the organization.
Since our focus is on individual and small businesses, we do not need to be concerned with complicated site measures. But still, we need to constantly evaluate whether our website is achieving our business objectives. And if it falls short, what can we do about it?
How often should you evaluate the performance of your site?
The answer all depends on you. When a new site is launched, the natural tendency is to monitor its performance daily. As time passes, the daily monitoring becomes weekly and sometimes, even less.
If you are serious about your business, you must spend a few minutes everyday or every other day to check your statistics.
It is good to keep tab of your before and after stats. Let's say you launched a flyer distribution campaign to promote your site. You must take note of how this marketing exercise affected the number and quality of your visitors. This must be done everytime you launch a new campaign. This way, you can make an enlightened decision on which marketing methods you should pour more resources in.
While raw measures (hits, page views, etc.) are very valuable measures, site-specific measures are also very important in determining the impact of your site to your desired audience. These two sets of measures will be discussed in the succeeding sections.
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The need for site measures
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Both raw measures and site-specific measures are needed in order for you to:
 Evaluate whether your site achieves the goals that you set out in your business plan.
Evaluate which promotion strategies are working for you: which should be pumped up and which
should be discontinued.
Re-evaluate the contents and navigation strategy of your site, if it isn't delivering the
results you expect.
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