Measurement is important. No one will argue.
It is the only way to get quantitative data that is objective. Measurements can be compared from one snapshot of your status to the next. It gives you a baseline from which improvement and progress can be made.
But in order to make those improvements, you need to know what is behind the measurement.
Since the internet is such an important front-end to your whole customer acquisition process, no one can afford to be passé about how effectively it is working for their business. We all know that the top-of-the-funnel must work. And even in cases where your prospect does not enter from the top, they will look at the website during their buying process. You need a measurement.
This makes website graders great tools. They are able to give you a comprehensive set of measurements about all the parameters that culminate in a website score.
But how different are they from your bathroom scale?
There are all those weight-loss enthusiasts out there, who are finally ready to look at the scale to understand exactly how bad their situation is. Of course, the scale does not really tell them anything that they didn’t already know anyways. That they are just carrying around too much weight. But the scale does put a real measurement on it. And it establishes the baseline.
And then there is that burst of energy, enthusiasm, and willpower to do something. Eat less. Eat properly. Exercise. It is no secret that fitness centres are packed in January every year with a surge of new enthusiasts.
So what happens after that?
For most of the crash-course enthusiasts, what happens it that they attain some positive results in the short term. Then slowly things go back to the way they used to be. And all of the weight comes back. That is a net gain of zero. Doing a lot of things for a short time did not work.
This bears a remarkable similarity to all those businesses out there who want to improve their demand generation capabilities. They want that website to drive more leads. It’s all about putting food on the table today. Seeds can only be planted if they can grow fast enough. And this sense-of-urgency translates into an impatience level.
Quick results. Quick wins. Instant gratification is what it is all about.
It means applying lots of actions after little thinking. But quick results may have that undesirable side-effect. Unsustainability. Have you ever seen blogs that have been started, and there are no posts, or one post, or a few great posts and then a full stop. And what perception does that impart on your website visitors. You guessed it. It’s a negative one. Which means you are worse off than before you started.
So when you look behind that website grader, or whatever assessment tool you choose, you need to come away with a plan that fits your situation. You need to accept what new activities can be transformed into habits that your company can keep doing. Make things workable one step at a time, and this will lead to those enviable sustained process that will deliver predictable results and flow to your marketing and sales.