Complete Web Monitoring

Chapter 1. Why Watch Websites?

Smart companies make mistakes faster.

When it comes to figuring out what business you’re in, there’s only one rule: nobody gets it right the first time. Whether you’re a fledgling startup or a global corporation launching a new brand, you’re going to tweak your strategy before you find the best way to go to market.

There’s no secret recipe for this. It takes time and resources to try something out, and the sooner you know it’s wrong, the sooner you can try something different, wasting less time and money.

The changes you try may be simple, iterative adjustments to messaging, usability, or target market. On the other hand, they may be far-reaching—switching from a product to a service, targeting a different audience, or dealing with the fallout from a launch gone horribly wrong.

Successful companies adapt better than their competitors. However, it’s easy to miss the key point of adaptivity: You can only adjust when you know what’s not working. Everyone needs to make mistakes faster, but not everyone can make mistakes properly. Many organizations simply lack the feedback to know when and how they’re messing up.

The amazing thing about the Web is that your visitors are trying to tell you what you’re doing wrong. They do so with every visit cut short, every slow-loading page, every offer spurned, every form wrongly filled out, every mention on a social network, and every movement of a mouse.

You just need to know how to listen to them.

This book is about understanding ...