What Is Website Evaluation/Web Metrics?

Evaluating your website is a best practice for managing your agency's website. It's the process of collecting, analyzing, and evaluating data that tell you how well your website is meeting its objectives, so you can make improvements. Routinely evaluating your site helps create a higher quality product that meets your customers' needs and your agency's mission. It's not a one-time exercise; it's an ongoing process that requires an overall strategy to determine what, when, and how you’ll evaluate your website.

Read more about why website evaluation is important and how it will give you return on your investment.

There are two kinds of performance measures related to websites, and they are sometimes confused:

• Website effectiveness: First, you should measure effectiveness in terms of visitors' experiences on your website. For example, you can measure how many people visit your site, how satisfied they are, and how well they're able to accomplish what they want. The jargon for this kind of measurement is "Web metrics" or "Web analytics." Read more about different types of website evaluation.

• Achievement of agency mission: Second, you should measure the impact of your website on achievement of your agency’s mission. These performance measures address the extent to which your agency is achieving its mission specifically because of its website. Read more about tying evaluation to agency mission.