Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

The only measurements that are important to retain concern the number of visits, visitors and conversions. With a new site, there is not real correlation between old and new for pageviews or navigation. Did people accomplish their goals better/faster/more often with the old or with the new? Did you get more of them to register/download/buy with the new than with the old. That will tell you how valuable the redesign was. But clickpath analysis, pageviews, dwell time - those sorts of metrics simply do not compare.

The best thing to do is to benchmark the new site from day one so you can compare it to itself. The goal now is continuous improvement, rather than brute-force redesign every now and then.

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Jim Sterne https://www.targeting.com
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Emetrics Summit https://www.emetrics.org/summit604
May 24-26, London web analytics conference
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Concur heartily with Jin and Christian.

Why would you spend money measuring something that has been superseded? Would you go back to it if it measured better than the new website? Is this a "New Coke" vs Classic Coke" argument?

No, for my money, move forward bravely with the decision you've made, benchmark your "New World Order" from day one, and then do what Val Frazee and the team are doing here at MarketingProfs, i.e.:

- Listen to/Ask users for their views of the website.
- make suggested changes rapidly (providing they make sense and fit your strategy) and let users know their voices have been heard.
- make continuous, organic changes, additions, improvements.

What's the URL of your new site so we can come and look?

Good Luck

Chris

Great advice! I agree with everyone's comments.

The most important values to record are most certainly visitors, hits, and opt-ins (as Jim stated).

I am in the middle of a major overhaul on my site as well, so I can relate.

A couple things worth mentioning (even though you may already know):

Make the launch seamless. In otherwords, no downtime. Use your Web editor to instantly replace all the new pages at once.

Make sure you save the old site pages to your HD, burn it onto a disk, and keep track of it in case something goes wrong. Same goes for the new site as well.

I wouldn't post anything on the site like "Hey, its still us", or "New design, same ervice!", unless it is in a sidebar box or the like that is used for making short announcements or headlines. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to send a brief email to your subscribers announcing the launch.

Good Luck!