Return On Investment

With regards to business perspective on online marketing, fortunes are spent on IT, but precious little is spent on building a developing a sound marketing strategy to support it. However, there is hope; focus is slowly shifting to look at the return on investment (ROI) on the web sites that were built. This shift means more and more individuals are looking at ways to improve the ROI for their online presence, in part so that they can justify the necessary updates and upgrades. If you have not figured out the ROI on your web site, you are not alone, and it's something you can easily do starting today.

Here's how to do it.

For ecommerce sites, the obvious objective is straightforward. Increase sales, and lower the cost of acquiring the customers. This means don't just look at increasing sales, but see how you can increase sales without substantially increasing costs. This means, you want to measure your net sales, and compare that data with your sales per visitor, cost per visitor, and conversion rate. Less visitors who buy more is better than more visitors who buy less. They cost less, and likely get better service.

For content or informational web sites, objective is simply to increase readership, and the overall level of interest in the content provided. There are lots of metrics to do this.

If you are not monitoring your ROI in some way, you're probably not doing a great job building or maintaining that web site. Being able to monitor the ROI, and objectively review the results is what perspective is all about.