Your bounce rate is the number of people who land on your website and don’t click through to another page. Your analytics package should tell you which pages have a high bounce rate. Pay attention to this number because it is a negative and you need to do what you can to reduce the bounce rate.

Instead of looking at your average bounce rate across the entire website, which isn’t very useful, look at the bounce rates for your individual pages. Most websites have high bounce rates (somewhere around 70%-80%), but you don’t have to. You want to get that bounce rate below 50% if possible. Find out what your site visitors are looking for and provide them with information that will help them achieve it.

Bounce rates differ from industry to industry too. Are your site visitors just looking for information or are they looking to buy a product or service. If they are looking to buy something and all you have is information then you’ll get high bounce rates. If they are looking for information and you have products or services to sell then you will have high bounce rates. If either of these is the case then you are likely targeting the wrong keywords and phrases or you are not making the right offerings. It could be a combination of the two. To fix it, do a little deeper analysis of your site visitors’ needs and tweak your web pages to provide that or create new web pages and drive your visitors there.

Your bounce rate is a very important statistic and says a lot about what your visitors really need. It all starts with web development and builds from there.

If you have $2,200 laying around then you might want to consider taking the Online Marketing Boot Camp. This looks like one action-packed week.

The boot camp will cover analytics and pay per click advertising, social media marketing, and a host of other must-have information on Internet marketing. Speakers will come from Google, EPIK, and elsewhere from around the world. It looks like the bulk of the training will be on Google Analytics, but there should be some useful information on the other topics as well.

I get no commission if you sign up. The downside is travel and hotel expenses. The boot camp will take place in Burlington, Vermont and run for four days. But the knowledge and information you gain about Google Analytics and Google AdWords (the boot camp is sponsored by Google) from experts like Avinash Kaushik appear to be invaluable. Only 70 seats are being offered so you better get in early because it looks like they’re going to sell quickly.

Get more information on the Online Marketing Boot Camp here.

No matter what kind of small business website you have, there is one tool that will benefit you anywhere in the world: Google Analytics. An account with Google Analytics is free. But it is one of the most essential tools for your business.

Google Analytics will help you track and analyze your traffic, sales conversions, and other important website statistics. If you care what people are doing on your website then I highly suggest you open up a free Google Analytics account.

Once you sign up for an account, you take the Google code provided and insert it onto each page of your website. Then you’ll be able to log in to your account at any time and see how many visitors you’ve had, where the visitors came from, how long they stayed on your site, your bounce rate, and see other statistics and trends. You can also set goals and track how well you’ve done in meeting them.

This tool is important if you wish for continuous improvement in your website business. And one other aspect of Google Analytics that is helpful is you have the ability to see how well you are doing against your competitors. A truly useful tool indeed.

It´s very easy to ignore parts of internet marketing that you simply don´t understand or aren´t sure how to do. Tracking and analytics falls under this category for many small business owners. The whole concept sounds good, but it is often quite confusing, so it just gets left out. Bad idea.

While you can certainly be successful at internet marketing without tracking and analyzing everything you do, this would be a huge mistake. Here are a few very good reasons that you should consider including tracking and analytics in your internet marketing campaigns:

• Repeat successful campaigns.
• Know which of several ads run at the same time works best.
• Dump useless internet marketing campaigns.
• Find out exactly where people are coming into your website . . . it probably isn´t your home page.
• Tailor your landing pages precisely for those who are actually landing on them, with tracking and analytics, you can see exactly what people are doing once they land on your site.

It is worth it to learn how to incorporate tracking and analytics into your internet marketing. It will allow you to boost your business by quite a bit, since you can see exactly what is working and what isn´t. You may get a general idea of this by just looking at your basic website stats, but proper tracking will tell you a lot more and give you details that can help you increase your conversion rates and adjust your pages to draw in more clients.

If you aren´t currently using tracking and analytics, you definitely need to start. Otherwise, it´s like driving on flat tires because you just aren´t sure how to fill them up!

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
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Every website needs a good analytics program. You need to be able to study your traffic patterns, conversions, where your traffic is coming from, what pages they visit, how long they stay on your website,and how long they stay on each page of your website. Which web analytics system you use is largely academic, but for most small business owners, Google Analytics is adequate.

If you use Google for pay per click then the Google Analytics system is a necessity. And it’s free. It won’t really help you if you use Yahoo! Search Marketing because Yahoo! has its own analytics system. But Google will do a lot for you otherwise.

All you need to start a Google Analytics account is a Google AdWords account. You don’t even have to use Google AdWords. You just have to sign up for the account then you can use Google Analytics, perhaps the most thorough analytics system online. It is at least the most thorough free analytics system available. I highly recommend it.

Caroline Melberg
Small Business Mavericks
Small Business Mavericks Blog

I was delighted today to see Luke Newton’s post over at Skatterbox on the 10 Best Analytic Blogs - one of the greatest things about online marketing is the fact that so many marketing techniques are measurable and quantifiable - yet, measurement is often where those of us who run our own small business tend to fall short. I can certainly measure the basics, but I’m no analytics expert.

Luke’s list is the best resource I’ve seen for pulling all the great info on analytics in the blogosphere together - check it out on his blog at www.Skatterbox.com today!

Caroline