Is Your Site Getting the Credit It Deserves?

Leads. Generating leads, not sales, may be your site's primary goal. Rather than just look at the raw number of leads, try to quantify their value, too. Solid offline tracking can show you close rates as well as average sales values of the online leads. If your site generates an average 1,000 leads per month, and 200 of them end up in sales averaging $5,000 each, a Web lead's value can be calculated at $1,000:

average leads closed / total leads x average revenue per sale = lead value

Be sure to get credit for that.

Customer service. The Web channel can be an effective way to service customers at a much lower cost than offline options. Many of our client organizations want to calculate the impact of the Web channel on overall customer service costs.

First, you have to know your baseline costs. Average per-call call center costs, for example, can range from $3.50 to well over $10; answering an e-mail can cost $1.50 to $3.50 or more. The cost of a site-based service transaction is usually well under $1.

As they say, do the math. Understand the volume of each correspondence type and the related cost. Then you can determine the efficiencies of the Web channel. For example:

Call center: 100,000 calls x $5.00 per call = $500,000

E-mail: 50,000 e-mail messages x $3.00 per e-mail = $150,000

Web: 80,000 help visits x $0.30 per visit = $24,000

Total support costs: $674,000

Average cost per touch: $2.93 (total costs divided by total support touches)
These are just a few examples of direct values that are fairly easy to quantify for many sites. They're also quick exercises to provide the ammunition you need when it's Web channel defense time at your outfit.

Next time, indirect value measurements, such as the site's value as a research tool in the buying process, customer satisfaction, and more.

In the meantime, consider all the different ways your Web site impacts your bottom line. Start calculating that impact in hard cash.