I’m asked all the time by people what I think they should do to change their website to help grow their business. Sometimes they start with, “Should I change my prices?” or “Do I need to pay to advertise on Google”.

To really understand what needs to be updated on a website, you should first read through your site’s reports or statistics. These numbers can tell you haw many people come to your site, what phrase they searched for to get them there, how much time they are spending on your site, which pages get viewed the most, which web browser your site is being viewed in, etc.

If you have a bunch of visitors, but they leave your site right away, something needs to change. If you aren’t getting visitors because your site can’t be found when searching for words related to your site, something needs to change.

Don’t start by lowering prices if your online store isn’t selling. If you are priced right with your competition in your marketplace, there are lots of other web-related things to look at.

When I look at statistics, the 2 items that intrigue me the most are:

1. what phrase did someone search for to find the site

2. how much time are they spending on the site.

How can you view your web stats?

That differs for every web site. Perhaps your hosting company has reporting automatically installed. Maybe your web or SEO company has placed an analytics program like Google Analytics directly on your site. You should be able to find out with an email or 2 to the people you’ve worked with.

Virgin Atlantic has launched a new, in-flight show, PitchTV (which also can be viewed on virgin.com.)

Entrepreneurs in search of investment and exposure can upload short video pitches. The site’s community will vote for their favorites, and each month the winning videos will be on the new PitchTV show, to be viewed by all the Virgin business travelers.

If you’re a budding entrepreneur, make a 2-minute video of your best pitch possible, then follow the instructions here.