When constantly updating the content on your site, do you ever ask your customers what content would interest them or make them more likely to purchase? I'm a big fan of beefing up site content, but there is a ton of site content that makes me scratch my head. In many cases, it's obvious that someone on the marketing team or executive team said, "Let's put this oddball article on the site because people will like it and it will go viral." Of course it may become viral, but only if it's relevant and interesting to your audience. If your audience scratches its head and responds with a "who cares" attitude, then superfluous content will hurt you.

Asking your customers what content they would like to see on the site can save you an unbelievable amount of time and energy. This doesn't mean that you still shouldn't track path behavior and conversion metrics within your web analytic package, but wouldn't you rather have a head start? Whenever we make any content additions, site copy changes or add new product pages, we come back to this statement:

"It doesn't matter what we think, our audience will let us know what they like and what works."

As a marketer, I admit that it's easy to forget this principle. It's especially easy to forget with all of the new technology that's available. For instance, if video doesn't make sense in certain sections of your site, don't put in video just to have video. The same idea goes for any of the new tools that continue to barrage us as marketers.

Asking your audience about the content they are interested in will give you direction for ancillary products, strategic partner content, video, audio and anything else you can think about adding on your site. Remember, who better to give you this guidance than the people who visit your site, especially if you want them to keep coming back to your site.