HOW many of us small firms have made money from each of the “hits” we receive to our website each month?

Why is it that the traditional web design company offering development and optimisation services gauge results on the volume of faceless traffic known as “hits” delivered each month to a customer’s website?

Who ever made money out of a hit? A hit in my estimation is a huge miss. A missed opportunity. It’s not a popularity contest, it’s a business marketing tool. And the most powerful marketing tool a business has in its arsenal.

Hits only become interesting to me when we know who they are, and we also know they are interested in our product or service.

How many “hits” would you trade for one of these single visitors – real people with names?

The best equivalent I can come up with is if a shop declared a fantastic day’s trade because 2,000 people looked in the window.

If you fail to engage any of your window shoppers, what’s the point?

By following the traditional process of just “visually stimulating” web design, we found it impossible to excite and delight our clients.

Now we simply concentrate on making our clients’ websites fulfil their business objective.

Business owners will only become delighted and excited about their website when their level of demand and cash into the bank increases.

Asking questions and understanding the client from the outset and then implementing a relevant business strategy within their website is key.

The beauty of the web today means we can now gauge the size of the market before we begin projects. We only take on projects that have a viable chance of success.

How do you measure the success of your website? Website design should be all about lead generation and results. For us, the “hits generation” has long gone.

BRYAN ADAMS is managing director at internet and marketing specialists Ph Creative in Liverpool.