Most businesses consider their website an integral part of their marketing campaign. However, simply putting up a website and hoping for the best just isn’t enough. It’s essential to track your site’s traffic. This will let you know which marketing campaigns are working. For example, is your new website copy helping you make sales, or causing people to leave your site right away? Without tracking your visitors, you’ll never know.
Once you have your website analytics installed, and can see all those visitors coming to your site, you need to interpret the visitor activity information. What does it all mean?
Let’s break it down:
Hits: Many people confuse hits with visits. They are not the same. Hits are the number of times that an http request is made to your server. For instance, if a single visitor visits several pages on your site and pulls up images and other files on each page, the visit can count as several hundred hits.
Unique Visits: Tracking a visitor’s IP address, browser and operating system will measure the number of actual unique visits generated on your website. A visitor can browse several pages on your site, but their activity will only be counted as one unique visit. This number is the one you want to pay attention to, as it will give you the most accurate representation of how much traffic your website is generating.
Bounce Rates: Pay attention to your pages’ bounce rates. This number measures the number of visitors who come to your site and immediately exit. A high bounce rate can indicate that your page isn’t capturing your visitors’ attention. The page is either in need of updating, or is attracting visitors who are actually looking for something else. You can experiment using A/B testing to see which designs, content, and graphics work to lower your bounce rate.
Top Entry Pages: Where are visitors entering your site? Often, you’ll see direct hits to your site without a referrer. You can use the top entry page statistics determine how your visitors are arriving at your site. They may be coming from an online article or blog you’ve written. Make sure that your visitors will be able to easily navigate your website, no matter which page of your site they arrive on initially.
Top Exit Pages: This statistic shows the pages from which the majority of your visitors are leaving your site. Factors such as page content, graphics, navigation, and even color can affect a visitor’s decision to exit a website. Altering your website’s pages can work to keep a visitor’s interest in the site. Again, using A/B testing will show which design works best to retain your visitors.
Traffic Sources: This is by far my favorite in the analytics toolbox. I love checking our analytics every day to see which one of our ads, articles, or campaigns is driving the most traffic to our site. Use this resource to find out which of your marketing efforts are most effective.
Keywords: Another fabulous tool that will let you know what search terms or phrases your visitors are typing in to arrive at your site. Use this information to create articles and page content to drive visitors to your website.
Map Overlay: This tool will reveal where your visitors are located geographically. You will be able to see if the majority of your traffic is coming from the United States, or other countries. It will even narrow down tracking to certain cities or territories. This is extremely useful for honing your marketing message, as well as for scheduling staffing and determining your business hours.
Browser/Capabilities: It is essential to know how your visitors access your site. Do you have a slick flash website with Javascript? If so, visitors who are using dial up, or don’t have Java installed won’t be able to see your site. Viewing browser information will tell you which browser the majority of your site users are using. You can then make sure that your site is optimized for that browser. It’s also important to note here that you should always test your site to make sure it has the look and functionality that you require, in all browsers.
If you’re using Google Analytics, you have the added bonus of the site overlay, which is a fun tool that shows you how visitors found your content, and moved through your site, as well as funnel visualization and conversion goals.
All in all, it’s crucial to have analytics for your site, so you can maximize your marketing efforts by determining whether you’re reaching your target audience and converting visits to sales.
Joanne
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Help with Analytics
Thursday, September 20, 2007
New Business Website Help
Congratulations! You've started your new business and now you're ready to have your new website built. It's an important step in your business success. Naturally, as this may be new territory for you - you have some questions. We're here to help you!
Whether you've decided you'd like an online business card or catalogue, or you'd like to open an online store (Ecommerce website) - it'll help if you understand the basics of the Internet and websites and how it all works.
Once you understand the basics, it's not complicated at all. For simplicity, I like to use the analogy of your home to describe how websites work:
Where to start?
First you'll need a domain name. We have touched upon domain names in previous articles, you can read about Domain Names here.
Next up, you'll need to find hosting. Many web design firms are now offering hosting in addition to website design and you may be able to find a designer that can help you with all four of your requirements:
Finally, you'll need to work on your website layout in order to communicate with your web designer what you'll require for your website. We've listed the basics for you:
Decide what type of website you'd like to have:
Once you've decided what type of website you'd like, you will need to figure out what features you'd like your website to have:
Now that you've planned what type of site you'd like to have and what features your site will require, choosing a specific look and design options for your site is the next step:
Next you'll need to plan the structure of your website and how you would like your website to be viewed. Most websites contain main Menu items and individual Pages under those menus.
Now that you have your basic information you can communicate clearly with a web designer in order to begin creating your business website.
Other important aspects of your website that should not be overlooked are your website keywords, meta tags, page descriptions and analytics. Make sure that you choose a designer that will help you to market your site using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so that you don't have to spend a bundle on an Adwords or PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign.
We created a form on our site if you'd like to download it that includes the basic information covered in this article. For our potential customers, we also have the form located online for you to fill out. We also have additional information for small business planning in our Articles section of our website.
Best of luck to you in your new business and in building your business website!
Joanne Pele is the Vice President of Operations at Complete Business Systems. Complete Business Systems provides a ready-to-go branding package for your company, including website, logo, business cards and letterhead. Additional services include postcard design, databases, press release and web content writing. For more information, visit Complete Business Systems, or call 800-479-9186
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