Metrics Matter!
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.
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. 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 Yahoo! Search
Marketing, 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.
© Philippa Gamse. All
rights reserved.
Byline
Philippa Gamse, CyberSpeaker, is a Web strategy consultant
and
professional speaker. How "Emotionally Connected"
is your site?
Visit http://www.CyberSpeaker.com/
to find out. Philippa can be reached at (831) 325-3307 or
pgamse@CyberSpeaker.com
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Connected" is your
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