As with any business venture, websites should produce a positive return on investment. For e-commerce sites, it can be easier to determine the ROI through direct sales. But for non-e-commerce websites, it might be a little tougher.

How is your site assisting in your sales to begin with? There are many ways that a website benefits a sales process. Even as a tool in a face-to-face meeting, a website demonstrates your professional appearance and credentials. With referrals, most potential customers will go to your website well in advance of giving you a call. For many of you, your website is the single most visible face of your company. Will a visitor find an attractive and inviting site or a poor, outdated site that indicates you don’t have the time or interest in keeping up-to-date? Your site should provide an experience for your prospect to become more familiar with your business. This enables prospects to pre-qualify themselves and allows a meeting to focus on their needs. The net result of a well-done website is that it sets up the sale-closing conversation and increases the closing rate for those sales conversations.

But even for e-commerce sites, the same variables apply. First, is the site inviting? Second, is it easy to use? Is your website creating new customers and bringing them back regularly? Determine what a new customer to your site is worth. How many regular customers do you have ordering on the site and what is the income from each customer? With a simple calculation (customer income/number of customers = average customer value) you can get a sense of what a new customer is worth. Then calculate that over the lifespan of your customer ordering. That can be over a short period (2-5 years) or longer depending on your current customer base.

With Google Analytics and other tracking tools, you can and should measure your online traffic. Typically this is measured by tallying unique visitors (new vs. returning visitors), how visitors are finding you, referring URLs, and other factors found in the analytical tools. Marketing and promotional campaigns should result in a spike of visitors. Proper set up of your website’s structure and an investment in quality content can help you rank higher in Google search results.

Beyond advancing the marketing and sales process, your website can also save you time. Information is collected, orders processed, common questions are answered and new client pre-qualifications can all be handled online; saving you and your staff a considerable amount of time.

You will find that your website is your most important marketing and sales tool. It should be considered as essential as your office space or retail shop. A website is an investment in the future and growth of your company. A well-planned, well-designed site will help attract more business and you will see more return on that investment.