The score that tells you everything

This basic report on an e-commerce website took me 4 weeks to improve.

It started with a low score of 25. The lower the score, the slower the website loads as compared to all the websites collected by Google.

I approached the IT guy.

And he said: You need a more powerful server.

I approached the designer.

And he said: This score is not relevant. A beautiful website is more important than how fast the website loads.

I approached the user.

And he said, it must be easy to update. Nothing else matters. If there is no update, visitor will think that the website is not maintained and make purchases.

I approached the marketer.

And he said: Don’t worry about the score. Just spend more on advertising and the visitors will come.

I believed them once. And the result was disastrous. The visitor numbers dropped over time.

This time, I persisted and went on to learn everything I need to know to make it work. And finally, I manage to bring the score up to 90. And this score serves 2 purposes. I passed Google test and I am assured that my visitors will see the website fast, like almost instantly.

What I learned from the last 4 weeks is:

Each stake holder will advise you based on their perspectives. And they may be right under some circumstances. But if you start to pursue further, you will realize that their statements come with lots of assumptions.

You can improve only if you follow the right report and assumptions. This score I showed you is important for websites. If you score low, Google wouldn’t list it in first page of their search results and nobody will find you.

And if your website is loading too slowly, your visitors will go to your competitor whose site is loading faster than yours. Your marketing spend will be wasted.

That’s why I persisted to increase the score which individual stakeholders ignore.

It is based on a set of score that measures every aspect of a website.

Dashboard does not have to be fanciful. It has to tell you what you have to do to improve.

Learn data analytics and let the number tell you the true story.