Finding and implementing a great website analytics package is a must-have for any business that takes its website seriously. The go-to option is usually Google Analytics, but there are some other awesome (and sometimes free solutions) online. For instance:

Crazy Egg ($9-$99/month)

Crazy Egg’s main selling point is that it lets you build heat maps and track exactly where users are clicking. This is great for assessing your website’s usability. Being able to see which parts of your website are the most interesting is great for identifying areas to focus your efforts on. It can also help to improve website design and conversions.

Google Content Experiments (Free)

Google just loves giving away free tools. This is another great solution to implement if you want to test how changes in layout will affect clicks and sales. Formerly known as Google Website Optimizer, it has since been integrated with Google Analytics. It is one of the only A/B and Multivariate testing solutions on the market right now. GCE is great for small business owners who want to test out different ideas, and has a simple user interface. Set up can be a bit tedious, but the fact that it’s free and offers a ton of benefits makes it absolutely worth it.

Having an awesome website is great. But you can’t effectively monitor and track who are visiting it without an analytics package. Website analytics solutions are essential to assessing your online performance over time. There are a lot of options out there, but here are just a few that you should consider:

AWStats

AWStats comes pre-installed by a lot of web hosts. It can be downloaded for personal use, which is useful if you are setting up your own server. This solution burrows a bit deeper than other options, with unique features like monitoring whether people are hot-linking files from your site.

Google Analytics

The go-to option of many websites is Google Analytics. It’s free, powerful, and has a ton of features to take advantage of. Google Analytics makes seeing who is visiting your site a breeze with a ton of graphs and visuals of traffic. One of the most popular and robust options on the face of the planet, you can’t go wrong with this solution.

Compete

Compete is best known for showing the estimated amount of visitors the top websites receive. This package helps provide creative intelligence by showing how your visitors got to your website by tracking clicks before and after viewing your site. Compete has varying prices, but is definitely a tool worth checking out if you are serious about competitive intelligence.

An enterprise website is one of the most important pieces of any company’s marketing strategy. It’s important to invest enough time and money into your website to make sure it’s implemented well. There are five areas you should focus on to make sure your website design is executed properly.  Check them out:

Focus on the fundamentals.

What are the fundamentals? There are a lot of answers out there, but for us it’s delivering a clear message throughout the website. Your message needs to be clear and consistent across content, navigation, visuals etc.

Make sure you can appeal to multiple audiences.

As an enterprise you will have a variety of different audiences looking at your site. You need to make sure your website can cater to every potential customer/partner type. Keep your website’s overall feel in line with what your target segment is looking for. Ensure that your approach can appeal to a wider audience. Don't focus on a small niche that doesn’t reflect your entire customer base. One good way of doing this is by using different tabs for your different audiences. For instance, on our Fast Track website we have small business, designers, and enterprise tabs.

Utilize advanced design solutions.

Your website design needs to be able to seamlessly bring together the different components of an enterprise website. You need to ensure your e-commerce storefront, database/content management systems, and other systems synergize with each other.  A clean, unique, and consistent approach that adeptly reflects your brand is important. Also, keep up with the latest advancements and trends in enterprise design approaches. For instance, if your website isn’t responsively designed yet, by all means invest in that!

Focus on maximizing search engine visibility.

Search engines are king on the Internet today. Every enterprise website design needs to be built search engine friendly. Organic search is one of the best ways to get your company in front of your target audience. Invest early in a search engine friendly design to eliminate headaches down the road.

Treat your website like a showcase.

Think of your website as a showcase for all the great things your enterprise provides. Focus on how to bring your value proposition and products to life. Doing this will help to create a website that is vibrant, dynamic, and a sales asset for your company.

More business equals more profits. There are many ways to increase sales, but a lot of these can be quite troublesome. One of the easiest methods available is to increase your service offerings. By becoming a one stop shop, you can capture every single dimension of a client’s project, and not lose any revenue to other businesses.

Here are three ways to accomplish just that:

Add on-going service offerings to retain business

Cash flow is extremely important for business. Building consistent revenue is crucial to ensuring business survival. Adding ongoing service options such as SEO, content optimization or design alterations can go a long way to stabilizing cash flow. This is even more important if you see that your competitors are employing similar methods. Monthly subscription packages also allow you to maintain close relationships with companies. Eventually, they will have another large project to do and you’ll already be top of mind.

Become proficient in multiple web platforms

WordPress designers are a dime a dozen. The problem is that not every business wants a WordPress site.

And this doesn’t only apply to WordPress. There are quite a number of designers that specialize in only one platform.  They fail to realize that they are potentially limiting their business by doing this. Larger enterprises may want something based on .NET or another platform. Becoming proficient in multiple platforms will open up more doors, meaning more sales.

Outsource development to increase profits and secure more contracts

This ties in to the idea of becoming a one-stop shop for clients. While offering great design services can lead to business success, tying in good development services to the mix is essential. Offering to do both design and development for clients will streamline their processes and minimize costs, while creating more profit for you.

Outsourcing development is cheaper than it has ever been before. There are tons of companies both local and abroad that are looking for work and are willing to provide great deals.

Also, outsourcing development work goes both ways. As your business relationships grow, you development partners may approach you with potential design opportunities.

Definitely a win-win for all parties involved.

In order for you website to realize its full potential, it needs to have an optimal level of usability. This means making it easy for users to navigate, find, and use content. Site Evaluator looks at a bunch of factors when providing a usability score to your website, and here are 3 ways to improve your score.

Include a suitable site map for users and crawlers

Every website needs to have a well-structured site map that users and site crawlers can use to navigate to different pages. A site map most commonly refers to buttons or links at the header or footer of every page that connect to major areas of the website. If users find it hard to navigate your site they will leave. If search engine crawlers find it hard to navigate your site they will give you a lower search ranking. If you make life easy for users and search engines they will reward you with more traffic.

Make sure every link and file isn’t broken

One of the most annoying things on any website is when you see a link that connects you to something cool and it doesn’t work. Nothing makes a user more frustrated and more prone to leave a site than that. Every link and file needs to be working so that you don’t drive potential customers away. Take care of the little things and your website will perform much better.

Ensure content is fresh, ample in supply, and with no errors

You can have the greatest website design on Earth, but if you lack consistently fresh content no one is going to come back for more. The Internet is a ‘what have you done for me lately’ industry. Everything on your site needs to be fresh, and error free so that any user can take advantage of everything you have to offer. Search engines look at this too and will reward you with higher rankings for doing so. Keep up with developing trends, and throw out anything that isn’t fresh.