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Posts Tagged ‘tracking and analytics’
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
So many small businesses pay a service to create their website, and they think they can place a big check list beside that to-do item and never think about it again. So wrong. Everything online is a process, and thank goodness it is. You can always update your site, add content, tweak your profile and improve your Google rank.
The good news is that there are some great online tracking tools that can help you improve your site, draw viewers, and know which of your webpages draws them in–and which ones are tanking. Knowing your bounce rate can make all the difference.
What’s a bounce rate?
It’s not how fast you can jump on a trampoline–it’s when someone visits your site and literally bounces in–and bounces out. They don’t go any further. They’re a one page wonder. Usually that means they either thought your site was about something else, or you didn’t hold their interest.
When measuring your bounce rate on Google Analytics, be sure to check several things:
Your Page Visits
Time on Site
New Visitors
Each tells you something different. For example, if a new visitor comes to your site, stays less than 30 seconds to a minute and leaves, you’ve got a bit of a problem. It may be in your title, your keywords, or with the graphics of your site, lack of content…in other words, you failed to hook your viewer. Consider making some changes.
If a new visitor comes to your site and stays more than a minute, you can consider this somewhat of a success. Even if they didn’t click to other pages, you held their interest. Perhaps they’ll revisit later. I call this “circling the camp.” Oftentimes, a visitor is itchy–they’re not ready to commit, they want to know what else is out there, but they did circle the perimiter–they know who you are and where you are. Success.
How to improve your bounce rate?
Make sure you page is navigable. Can they find where to click through easily? Are you links underlined and a contrasting color? Is your site too jumbled? Has it been a while since you added new content?
Try improving just one of these areas and watch your bounce rate for improvement.
Be sure to check out your content report and analyze every page of your website. Chances are, you’ve got a wink link. Find out where you’re losing your viewers, and you just figured out where to start implementing a few changes.
Tags: bounce rates, google analytics, tracking and analytics, website development
Posted in Business Writing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Tools for Small Business, Tracking & Analytics, Uncategorized, website development | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
Attracting quality visitors to your small business website isn’t easy, and you won’t always know what exactly worked–but your efforts will garner results if you’re tenacious. I bet you thought I was going to say patient, but patience isn’t enough. Dogged determination and hard work are just the beginning and the key to your success is in setting goals, making plans to get there, and then tracking your results so you know when you’re doing something right.
What are your initial goals for your website? Do you want to shoot for sheer volume to start off? Or would you rather judge the online presence of your success by sales? Both are valid.
The first step most website owners use is to sign up for Google Analytics. You need to watch your traffic for about three months to get a good idea of how you’re doing. Are there certain days that traffic spikes? Is it after you send out an e-newsletter or email promotions?
There are two kinds of visitors: one time visitors and repeat visitors. Both are important, and knowing how long they visit, how many pages they view, and how often they return is very helpful to understanding what you’re doing right and what you can improve. The more people who know about you, your products and your services, the more you build your reputation–and this approach will eventually lead to sales.
A couple of great features on Google Analytics you might want to check out are the Visitor Trending section and the Average Pageviews section. Get familiar with this portion of Google Analytics because this is where you learn the most about your visitors–how long they stay, how many pages they visit, and over time, you want to improve your average.
Next, visit the New vs. Returning Visitors section. Here, you’ll learn everything from bounce rate, unique visitors, and time on site. It’s like having a webcam showing you which items a customer picks up, and which ones they bring to the register to purchase. You won’t begin to understand it until you’ve let some time pass as you track your website’s visits.
As you get comfortable with Google Analytics, you can begin to make form a solid plan of action. You can brainstorm about ways to build viewer loyalty and gain those wonderful return visits, as well as reaching out to new viewers that help spread the word about your business and business website.
Something great happens as you continue to build your online presence. You become proud of what you’ve accomplished. You set goals and then get to celebrate achieving them–and every small success cheers you on.
Tags: google analytics, online marketing for small business, tracking and analytics
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing, Tools for Small Business, Tracking & Analytics, website development | 3 Comments »
Monday, April 6th, 2009
A hit is a hit is a hit…or is it? How many hits does your website get? You’ve probably been asked that before, and even if you can brag you get a million hits a month, does it mean what you think it means? How do you measure traffic on your small business site, and more importantly, how do those hits turn into sales?
To understand how to track your website traffic, you have to understand what a hit is.
A website “hit” isn’t as simple as you think. It’s not when someone types in your website name, or find you on Google, Yahoo, or MSN and clicks on your site. That’s not the only definition of a hit.
A hit is a file–and your webpage may contain one, or one thousand. A hit can be an image, written content, or order form. One of your webpages could contain many “hits.”
But what matters is not how many hits you get, but if the hit leads to interest–a sale, a contact, or a networking opportunity. A simpler page with only one hit might just do the job.
Ways to Gauge Your Site Traffic:
Visits, Pageviews, Unique Visitors, Time, and Referrers.
Visits, also called sessions are when a visitor comes to your website. Whether they stay one minute or one hour, it counts as one visit.
Pageviews, is when a visitor looks at any one of your website pages. That’s why it’s important that each of your pages has a unique URL, or address–so that they’re indexed separately.
Unique Visitors, are “first time” visitors. If I return to your site, I’m no longer a unique visitor. Unique vistors isn’t as important (per say) because they might have looked around, realized it wasn’t what they were looking for and left.
Time, refers to how long a visitor stays on your site during any visit. By knowing how long a visitor stays, you can tell how valuable that page is. Are they reading content? Placing an order? You want to create pages that are interesting and helpful so visitors stay longer. The longer they stay, the more they’ll remember you and refer you to others.
Referrers, is a way for visitors to get to your site. A refer might be a search engine such as Google, or Yahoo–or it might be a link from another site.
These five tracking tools are essential to any website owner. You need to know who comes to your site, how many times they return, how long the stay, and how they got there. Take a few minutes and visit your dashboard and take note of who your visitors are. This knowledge can help you create a website that’s worth visiting. and is a great marketing and networking tool.
Tags: internet marketing for small businesses, tracking and analytics, web traffic, website development
Posted in Tools for Small Business, Tracking & Analytics, search engines, website development | 1 Comment »
Saturday, March 1st, 2008
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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Tags: internet marketing, tracking and analytics
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing, Tracking & Analytics | No Comments »
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