It wastes your valuable time and money if you can't measure your return on investment (ROI) once you get a website up and running, so once it is up you need to track and monitor what is response you are getting and how many sales you make.

These are the key areas you need to measure and monitor:

Monitor

• Website statistics – how many people visit your website, what pages interest them, how they get to your website (external links).
• Company and personal online perception – how people perceive you and your business.

Measure

• Leads – how many people that visit your website become potential customers by taking an action on your site e.g. signing up for an eNewsletter.

• Sales conversions – tracking how many people buy from you versus how many people visit your website.

The first place to start with monitoring your website statistics is with Google Analytics. This is a free tool which will track the website statistics above, plus you can do some advanced measurement like tracking sales conversions and leads once you have your website setup with product pages where customers can buy from you, or with an email newsletter subscription tool.