What do they want?

Marketers have gotten used to paying attention to web analytics - the clickstream data from tools like Google Analytics that give us all kinds of insight into what people do on our web sites. That’s great, but there are questions that all that data can’t answer: why are people coming to your site? What do they want? And are they finding it?

Web analytics can tell you that visitors are looking at 20 pages on your site. But analytics can’t tell you whether that’s because your content is incredibly compelling or the vistors are lost and confused. It can’t tell you if that high bounce rate is because you have all the important content on your home page, and visitors are getting everything they need there, or because the home page is confusing and they’re just bailing out.

Chris Brogan started getting at this topic in a recent post where he asked, “What do you think people want from your site?” That’s a good place to start - but what you think people want isn’t what counts. It’s what they think they want.

So why not ask them?

Consider using something like 4Q, a free tool provided by iPerceptions in collaboration with analytics guru Avinash Kaushik. 4Q lets you add a post-visit survey to your site to collect some basic information: why do visitors come? Do they find what they want? Why or why not? You can control how many people see the survey so it doesn’t become annoying.

Oh, and it’s free. Yes, free. It’s also limited, but if you’re not collecting this information at all, it’s an excellent way to get started, get a sense of what your visitors are after, and help you decide whether to invest in something more extensive and flexible.

Ask yourself what you think visitors want. But please, don’t stop there; go ask them.

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