Website analytics is a Big Data gathering method that can give you an average 117 percent return on investment, or as much as 2,000 percent, according to International Data Corporation, a Massachussetts-based research firm. If you have a few minutes per day to devote to implementing an analytics-based marketing strategy, you can see revenue improvement within a few months. It will tell you what is working on your business’s website, and what is not. At first glance, tracking the categories can seem overwhelming, but it’s pretty simple once you dive in. There are plenty of help documents on the web to guide you in advancing every step of the way.
Google Analytics
A great place to start is signing up for Google Analytics. It is a user-friendly, free and a particularly useful data gathering service. There are companion products and services available that you can use to improve your website traffic quite easily with the data, such as Google AdWords. This service helps you advertise your business on Google for a relatively inexpensive rate, according to their AdWords page.
Here’s a great summary video from Joel Owens of DigitalMarketer on Google AdWords if you’re unfamiliar:
Analytics gives you more information than you may ever have time to use, unless you hire someone to handle the internet marketing data for your website. Richard Schaeffer of Liquid Holdings, for instance, would want to know when and how many investors are visiting his websites at any given time, and for what reasons.
The reports that you can run show the users’:
- demographics
- number of visits
- bounce rate
- visits per page
- visit duration
- behavior
- technology systems
- mobile devices
- languages they speak
- social media activity
- what sites they visited before and after your business’s
- how they were referred
- the content they viewed
- geographical location
- the number who made a purchase
- custom categories that you may decide to add, such as data for a sale or promotion
Use filters to customize the reports, make changes to your web presence, and see what happens.
The Google Analytics social media report displays data for the content that users shared and which social media channel they used. The overall consensus is that shared content is directly correlated to the type that your customers enjoy reading. This data tool is indeed valuable for planning your content schedule!
If you have ads on your website, Google Analytics will record the clicks and predict which ads would be successful. Their purchasing preferences give you demographic data and the analysis will help you increase your advertising revenue.
Define Goals
Once you have the data that helps you understand your website’s status quo, set goals that will help your business improve. Use the following categories that help drive business as a guide.
- E-commerce for sales
- Content for customer web page visitation and time spent
- Lead-Generation for white papers downloads, email capture and newsletter subscriptions
- Self-Service for features on the website, such as help documents
Use a detailed reference guide, such as the one on leading SEO company Bruce Clay’s website to develop a detailed strategy for reaching the goals you set in each category.
Social Media Prowess
When you first begin experimenting with website traffic marketing, one of the best ways to drive a high level of traffic is creating compelling blog posts or content marketing articles. The articles should offer users valuable facts about the product or service your company sells without an overt sales message.
An additional way to promote a blog post is announcing its publication with a description and link on social networks. The process is tantamount to going to a meet-and-greet for a professional networking event. Share your post with colleagues, competitors, friends and related businesses on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn, and watch the traffic roll in.
If your post resonates with people, soon you will receive reciprocal sharing from the people you contacted. Reciprocal sharing has the added bonus of improving SEO.
Remember to post at least two to three times per week, and form a narrative with the posts on a logical topic schedule that culminates to a greater point. A series on coffee could begin with coffee bean planting and end with selling the finished product in a market.
Time spent on analytics and social media will bring you closer to user “stickyness,” or repeat lengthy website visits.
Lure Users With Technology
If your website and the software technology that drives your business are cutting edge, customers will take notice.
On a website, responsive design that resizes columns, text and formatting for different screen sizes, is at the forefront. Another feature users enjoy is multimedia, such as a video introduction. More recently, fixed position navigation has become an important design feature.
Software technologies that help you drive business may be invisible to your customers, but the ease with which you handle their concerns will promote your reputation. Today, many developers are creating applications that are relevant to your particular business. Software management for daycare centers, nonprofit agencies, associations, construction businesses, event planning and financial management are all available, and affordable. For example, Richard Schaeffer is a software developer that provides solutions for small hedge fund companies, while Affiniscape is an association application creator. Using these specific software products will help you achieve a more reliable business model that will ramp up your customer base.