I was recently reviewing the Google Analytics website data from a company. They have 11,400 pages on their site, but 59% of traffic is going to just the 100 most viewed, and another 10% is going to pages 101-200. So fewer than two percent of their pages account for 69% of their traffic.
This is a dated website – it’s not even responsive (doesn’t display properly on smartphones) – and it needs a major overhaul. But with that many pages it’s going to take months just to figure out what to keep, update, and delete. And it’ll take considerable money to create the strategy and design for a new website, create entirely new content, and select, license and implement a new content management system, etc.
Meanwhile, by making the site responsive, which could be done relatively inexpensively in just a few weeks, and focusing on improving those most important 100-200 pages, they can see measurable results quickly.
Perfect is the enemy of good. Don’t overlook a substantial, quick improvement while waiting on it.
PS: Donors to schools and colleges are also skewed much more than the traditional 80:20 Pareto rule suggests. In many cases just 5 percent of donors give 95 percent of the money with a few, big gifts. What’s the Pareto distribution for revenue among customers at your company? Or for other key metrics?
