Introspection and reflection lead to a better lifestyle and website:

With the current focus on electoral promises you might be asking “Is this a blog post about ‘greenwashing’?” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwash).

No! Although it is a serious message that is based on thinking ‘green’ as part of a lifestyle change. Switching to a greener lifestyle requires a certain level of introspection and reflection:

• What do you really need in life?
• What is life actually about?
• What is your essence of being and how do you go about being you with better efficiency?

Only when you ask yourself these questions will you have a clear picture of how your lifestyle needs to change, why and how you can quantify the effectiveness of your efforts. We suggest that the same kind of introspection and reflection on oneself is an appropriate action prior to engaging in any form of online optimisation. Looking
at what your website is for and what is is meant to deliver to your business is fundamentally important to understanding what should change, why and how to measure the effectiveness of the changes.

Our eco-efforts in a day-to-day life go largely unmeasured – I wonder how many ‘carbons’ did I reduce my footprint by today? One cannot afford to be so relaxed in business. You need to have a clear understanding of your website’s goals, what they mean to your company and how you measure them. You can’t afford to make a blind investment in your website, you need to measure the effects of changes so that you know what return you’re getting from your investment.

I am often quoted as saying, ‘if your don’t measure it, you can’t improve it’ where in actual fact, more correctly I should say ‘if you don’t measure your goals, you won’t know how effective your changes are’. You might measure the bounce rate on your site or the number of users with IE6 or the flash version your users have installed but are these metrics generally meaningful to your business?

In isolation, perhaps an occasional report has some merit but on the whole, unless you are measuring strategically relevant outcomes, the likelihood of identifying and delivering meaningful, actionable insight and improvement is drastically reduced.

Our lifestyle choices might reduce our carbon emissions. Our business decisions need to reduce emissions too – emissions due to inefficiency. Inefficiency in the context of business means reduced profit through lost customers and reduced key website outcomes.

What can you do to be effective when making changes?

Use the questions mentioned above and put them in the context of your business
and your website:

• What does your business/website really need?
• What is your business/website about?
• What is your website’s essence of being and how does it go about being your company with better efficiency?

You should think about your organisational goals and how your website delivers them through interactions with your customers. Conversion Works can help you structure the process of introspection such that whatever you choose to do with your website, however you decide to invest, you’ll know what return you are getting and how best to get it.

We’ll help you choose the right changes and measure the effectiveness of the changes so that you minimise the emissions your site is currently giving off.