2 Things Every Website Needs

Google Analytics Dashboard

By Vincent Wondra

April 2, 2013

… but not every website has.

As I work with a variety of websites, I’m often surprised by the website “essentials” that are missing.  These are items that free and easy to install, yet for some reason many web designers and developers don’t include on their websites.

Website Essential #1 – Social Sharing Buttons

You know what I’m talking about.  These are the  Like, Tweet, Share, Pin, +1 buttons that have proliferated all over the internet over the past few years.  These buttons make it easy for visitors to share content or images with your friends on a social media network of your choice. As long as your content is engaging those social shares will become a significant driver of traffic to your website.

Social sharing is also a very important factor of SEO, Search Engine Optimization.  The more your content is shared, the higher your search engine rankings.

Commonly Social Sharing Buttons

AddThis_vert SocialSharing1
ShareThis2
 share-the-knowledge
ShareThis
Social Sharing2

Want to add social sharing to your website?  Try some of these solutions:

  1. Facebook Buttons
  2. Twitter Buttons
  3. Google +1
  4. AddThis  – My Favorite Social Sharing tool.  I use it here and most of my clients sites.  It even includes social sharing analytics!
  5. ShareThis
  6. …or contact us and we will gladly help you out!

Website Essential #2 – Website Analytics

It’s impossible to know how effective your website is without analytics.

Are you getting 5 visits a day or 5000?  Do visitors to your website stay a while and look around, or do they flee in terror when your site loads up?

Your websites analytics will tell you this… and so much more.

Adding analytics to your website is fairly easy… and free, thanks to Google Analytics.  Once your account is setup, Google gives you the code to drop into your website. The whole process takes 15 minutes for a web developer to do.  It amazes me how many websites that I work on that don’t have Google Analytics or an alternative installed.  In my opinion, that’s just lazy.

Google Analytics DashboardGoogle Analytics provides all sorts of useful information to you about your website, it’s visitors, and their behavior.

  • Total Visits
  • New vs. Returning traffic
  • Avg. Pages per visit
  • Avg. Visit duration
  • Bounce Rate – How many visitors leave without clicking on anything
  • Demographics
  • Traffic sources
  • Top pages
  • And many, many more statistics

Google Analytics is very, very powerful.. and free to use… and it’s been around for years.  If it’s not on your website, it should be.

If your website is missing either of these two essential items, contact Bootstrap Business Solutions today, and we will help you out!

I'm the Founder & President of The BBS Agency & Prebuilt Sites. I have been building websites since the mid 90's. I fell in love with WordPress many years ago and today help companies leverage it's power. I'd love to help you next!