We're getting lots of hits to our website. I've heard this many times over the years from prospective new clients. When I ask "how is your website doing", I often get "our site gets a lot of hits" as a response.

What's a website *hit? What's "a lot"? Are hits important? If so, how important? If not, why not?

Defining Website Success:
The first step in knowing if your website is working for you is defining what success means to you and your particular company.

Website success most often is related to "our website is making us money". However, the goal of some sites is not to attract new customers. Look at mapquest.com for example. It's not trying to build a customer base, it just needs enough visits to enable them to justify advertising rates. The primary goal of other websites is to enhance customer service and/or to improve account retention. The site is geared towards serving the needs of existing customers, rather that attracting new ones. A church website might be an example of a customer service oriented website. Other sites are simply there to provide detailed information about a particular subject, like a non-profit website such as AmericanHeart.org.

Having a successful website starts with carefully examining the expected primary role of the site. The site should be developed to best serve that targeted goal. Then you need a way to measure that success.