Metrics
Matter!
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Recently,
I talked with a speaker about her “extremely successful”
Website. She based this opinion on the fact that
she was selling several e-books every day and generating
“some calls”. When I asked if she was reviewing
her traffic analysis, she said “No, why should we –
it’s clearly working – we can tell that from the sales”.
I didn’t ask if she knew how her sales and calls compared
to the actual visitor numbers for the site – I suspected
that she’d have been shocked to learn how many more
opportunities she was losing.
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Metrics
Matter!!
If you don’t know
what’s happening with your Website visitors, where they go,
what they’re looking for, what they respond to, and what turns
them off about your site, you can’t possibly make the most
of your online potential. Your Web traffic reports offer
unprecedented opportunities to analyze these relationships
on a one-to-one basis.
Here are some examples
of using your metrics to ask intelligent questions and make
informed adjustments to your site:
Tracking
your Promotional Efforts
There are many ways
to promote your site, both online and offline. Some
are free and some, while not costing money, do take up time
and effort. It’s important to know the marketing options
that generate the best return on investment for all your resources.
Joyce
Weiss works with her public relations consultants to analyze
the immediate impact of her radio appearances on her Website
traffic (at http://www.joyceweiss.com).
She said “This way we can decide if the Website needs to be
tweaked for radio shows, or if I need to say something different
on the shows to get people to sign up.”
Following
the links to your site (called “referring URL’s in the reports)
can be very useful in creating good professional relationships.
Often, site owners won’t tell you that they’ve quoted you
so it’s important to check that the reference is appropriate.
And,
it’s important to say thank you. I once followed a link
to my site and found that one of my articles was required
reading for a course at the University of Southern Oregon.
When I dropped a note to the Professor telling him how honored
I was, he replied “Not at all, I really like your ideas –
and by the way, we’re looking for a speaker for our next conference
. . .”
Dave Paradi does
this too: “I do check out those sites that link to mine.
One time I found that the link was to an old page, so I wrote
to them and suggested that they update the link. I was
also able to mention my other articles that would benefit
their visitors.”
If you’re paying
for traffic, make sure that the keywords you’ve selected,
or the sites that you’re advertising on are generating good
quality leads. Abby Marks-Beale told me how she does
this:
“I’ve set up separate
portal pages for those who come to me from my pay-per-click
program through Overture. This way I can see if the
program is really working.”
In other words, you
can create special entry pages for visitors from Overture,
Google AdWords, e-zines that you sponsor, or other campaigns.
If a visitor enters through one of these pages, they can only
have come from this one specific source. Then you can
follow where on your site these visitors subsequently go,
how they respond and ultimately decide whether they’re good
leads and whether your money is well spent.
Hot
Content Areas
Your traffic reports
list the most requested pages on your site, telling you what’s
hot and what’s not about your content. If you’re offering
downloadable articles or special reports, you can see which
of these are most popular.
Mitchell Gooze makes
a point of doing this: “We track white paper downloads
by person, and we know exactly who downloads which white papers.
We store this information in their data records. We
also know which topics are most interesting to visitors.”
Knowing the hot content
areas on your site can give you great ideas for future product
and program development. Rita Risser (http://www.FairMeasures.com)
developed a whole set of online checklists and policy guideline
documents based around the subjects that her visitors were
searching for.
Calls
to Action
One of my favorite
mantras is “Every Page of your Site Should Have a Strategy”.
You should absolutely know which segment of your target audience
each page is aimed at, what’s in it for them and what
you want as a result. Provide clear (and clickable)
calls to action at every point in your copy where the reader
might be ready to make the next move – whether it’s “Sign
up for our newsletter”, “Buy our product”, or “Contact me
to ask about our services”.
Sometimes this means
directing the visitor to the next page that you’d like them
to see. Dave Paradi told me:
“I realized that
people were entering my site on one of two specific pages,
which are a couple of my articles that now have great placement
on Google. I also noticed that almost all of these visitors
entered and exited on that page, not visiting any other pages.
“So how could I get
them to see the rest of the site - particularly the products
that I hoped they would buy? I included a link to my
products page at the bottom of each article. And last
month, the products page jumped to the second most visited
page, and it appears that many visitors, based on the value
of the articles, are checking out the products.”
And
he’s taking this a step further:
“It
hasn’t yet resulted in increased orders, but I think the next
area I need to address is writing more successful copy for
the products page.”
At
the Risk of Repeating Myself . . .
I like to think of
Web traffic analysis as “market research that cannot lie”.
The reports show you what visitors do on your site of their
own accord, without prompting or other influence. Not
to discount focus groups, surveys and asking your favorite
clients for feedback – those are important tools as well,
but not as powerful.
So, if you haven’t
clearly defined the strategies, target markets and outcomes
for your site, and if you aren’t looking at your metrics to
evaluate the success of these, then you’re shooting in
the dark with your Web investment. The examples
in this article show you just a few of the many ways that
you can use this information – I hope that you’re now motivated
to find out more about your own site.
© 2003, Philippa
Gamse. All rights reserved.
Philippa Gamse,
CyberSpeaker, is a Web strategy consultant and professional
speaker. Check out her free tipsheet for 23 ideas to promote
your Website: http://www.CyberSpeaker.com/tipsheet.html
Philippa can be reached at (831) 465-0317.
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