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Location: Blogs Precision Blog - Laura |
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| Posted by: Laura Theisen |
9/12/2008 9:45 AM |
It wasn't so long ago that there was no Internet marketing.
Most small businesses running their campaigns in-house sent out promotions or ran ads in various mediums and got an "idea" of how things went by reviewing sales figures after the campaign had run awhile.
Split testing was a costly luxury particularly in print mediums, and relying on customer service to consistently ask each potential clients "How did you hear about us?" was unreliable.
The web has made getting this information easier and more cost efficient than ever. Even the smallest businesses can extract the data necessary to really understand how well they are reaching their potential customers.
This information is generally referred to as "web analytics" but the variety of information that you can draw from this information goes well beyond answering "How many visitors did my website have today?".
With analytics set up properly, you can know from what outlet the visit was generated, how long they stayed on the site, what pages they viewed or how many visitors bought and how many bailed at checkout.
The applications available that can make pulling this information together a breeze, are generally inexpensive or free, depending on your needs, and aren't so technically advance the person currently managing your site content couldn't handle them.
Stats Don't Help You If You Don't Use Them
But what good is collecting data if you don't use it? In order to really make the internet work for you, you have to use what information you are collecting.
Most Website hosting services provide at least the basics of web analytics like how many visitors you had on a given day and what pages were landed on.
What do you do with that information? If the answer is "note it and move on", then you're missing out on one of the more cost effective and useful tools you have in your marketing arsenal.
Even on the most basic level - as with the simple data in the example above - you could target pages that may be low in visits or try to find patterns in visitor activity.
If you can access your web logs or are using a web analytics application, your information and therefore your specific actions can get more detailed.
Web Analytics Can't Tell You Everything
The more data you can collect about how your visitors are using your website or responding to a campaign, the better but this information will only show you where something is going wrong (or right) not what it is exactly that is wrong (or right).
There will always be a need for educated guess work and a whole lot of testing. That's why its so important to make looking at this data a consistent part of your marketing routine over time.
Also make sure you understand what the numbers you are looking at mean. For instance, the number of "hits" your site gets isn't the same as the amount of "visits" or "page views".
You Can Do It
There is a huge amount of information out on the web to help you learn about what is possible to extract from web analytics.
A little research and reading and the idea that you don't have to take on everything all at once and you'll be on your way! |
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