By Adam Kearney, MemberClicks creative director

Everything you do on a website is logged somewhere. That’s where the measurement aspect comes in. Website servers take note of all the actions a user takes on a website – every link that is clicked, every page that is visited, the time and duration of each visit, even whether the visitor found your site from a search engine or a link on another site.

Additionally, other details about your visitors are collected – the browser they are using, their screen resolution, their IP address (which reveals their geographic location), and so forth. All of this information is measured.

The collection aspect of web analytics is simply the process of storing all of this information. The server computer will usually keep logs of all the measured data. However, those logs are often confusing to understand. That’s where analytics software comes in. If you are running analytics software on your website then the software collects and keeps a record of all of that information.

The analysis aspect is up to you. What information is relevant to you? If you were a web developer, you probably care about things such as screen resolution and operating system a lot more than most people. But if you’re running an organization, you don’t have time to worry over those details, and you shouldn’t have to if you’re working with a good web provider. You probably do want to know, at minimum:

• The total number of unique visitors
• The time they spent on each page
• The path they took through your site / which pages were visited

With those three pieces of information, you can tell whether your visitors are reaching and reading the content that you provide for them. But, depending on your website, there are many other pieces of information available to you that might interest you.

• If you have a membership that is spread all over a diverse geographic region, you could learn the location of your visitors.
• If you update your content regularly or have an upcoming membership deadline, you could learn what time and date most people visit your site.
• If you are optimizing your site for search engines, you can learn what keywords people use to find your site.

And that’s barely scratching the surface. It all depends on the purpose of your website. You can use all of this information when you’re optimizing your site later.

The fourth and final aspect of web analytics is reporting. A good analytics program will also organize all the information available to you into an easy-to-understand format. Since so much information about each visitor is available, you want to be able to customize the information so that you can see the information that’s relevant to you.

You can often customize how you receive the information so that it is easily digestible. And you want to be able to compare different pieces of data over time to see if you’re improving. That’s what web analytics is, in a nutshell.

Once you understand the information available to you through web analytics, you can make a series of small but important decisions about your site that will improve its performance. We’ll go into detail about each of these in later articles in this series, but a few things you can do with the data gained through web analytics include:

• Improving the experience of your visitors by determining what attracts them and what doesn’t work.
• Designing goals and establishing hard numbers to define what success means for your site.
• Improving ROI by assigning value to website actions and optimizing from there.
• Setting up alternate versions of pages and testing them against each other to see which performs better.

Good morning! Take a look at these awesome presentations about how nonprofits can benefit from multimedia. Does your small staff association use video?

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Whether or not the old adage is true, I don’t know (although I’m inclined to say it is), but what I do know is that your organization’s website is probably the first thing many prospective members see of your organization.

What does it say about your association?

Is it welcoming, easy on the eyes and free of large blocks of text (which can often be difficult to read online)?

Or is it harsh, unwelcoming and difficult to navigate?

What do you want people to click on first? Is that the most prominent link on your homepage?

What information do you want people — both members and prospective members — to have right away? Is that obvious from your website?

Here are some tips:

- You cannot make relevant and important information difficult to find! Many organizations use drop-down menus to easily display multiple pages and information.

- Be sure your social media presences (if you have any) are visible on every page. Make it easy for people to share your content, and maintain an editorial calendar if you create original content.

- Use white and black for your basic colors — these are the easiest to read online — with your organization’s colors and logo as complements.

And don’t forget your mobile website! It should not just be a carbon copy of your website; mobile screens are much smaller than desktop and laptop (and tablet!) screens, so focus your mobile site on content, not design.

What are your best tips for using your website to make a good impression?

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This just in: The Membership Marketing Benchmark Survey results were released this past weekend at ASAE and The Center’s Annual Meeting. The white paper, which is available as a 40-page PDF here (registering to get access to the PDF is easy), is the result of a nearly month-long survey conducted this spring. More than 500 association professionals (an 18 percent response rate) responded to the survey, which was:

designed to gain insight into the tactics and strategies that organizations use to recruit new members, engage new members, renew existing members and reinstate former members and to understand which tactics correlate with higher new member input, renewal rates, and overall membership growth.

I’ll be breaking down the results in a series of posts, beginning with this one.

One thing I found interesting about the survey results was the top way prospective members learn about an association: through its Web site. To be honest, I thought word-of-mouth would have been the biggest membership marketing tool. Eighty-five percent of respondents said their organization’s Web site was the primary source for reaching prospective members. Word-of-mouth did come in second, at 77 percent.

These are important points for a few reasons. It’s fair to say your association’s Web presence is the best way to reach out to new members. It’s so crucial to have a Web site that is not only pleasing to the eye, but also easy to navigate and to make sense of. We know creating a Web site can be a hassle, and your association may not have the resources to put one together in a timely manner. But whether you take advantage of our Web site and membership management solution or not, know that the way your organization is presented on the Web is key to reaching out to prospective members. Functionality and style are both important, but don’t forget how vital new and refreshing content is to your audience.

Another takeaway from that first question is that word-of-mouth is the number two way to marketing to potential members. Your members should be your best advocates. Your members should be inspired by the work your association is doing, and their faith in the organization should make others want to see what the buzz is all about. If your members don’t advocate for your organization, then what else is there? Direct mail, promotions at conferences, advertising and job boards are all great, but your members should want to help the association grow. Never discount the power of word-of-mouth marketing.

Other responses that garnered more than 50 percent included:

• Direct mail to prospects: 76%
• Promotion at your own conferences/conventions: 65%
• E-mail promotion to prospects, coworker/colleague: 61%
• Exhibiting at other conferences/conventions (not your own): 53%
• Cross-sell to members who buy your materials or attend your conferences: 52%
• Advertising in your own publications: 51%

I don’t want to discount the importance of all of the above, but think about it this way: we all take word-of-mouth recommendations on little things (such as restaurants) and big things (apartment complexes, cars and even our own jobs). Why should an association be any different?