Do you know how your site is doing?

We looked at the importance of understanding your web stats in September 07 and since then I’ve talked to many people about how their website is performing. We might know how many online sales we are receiving but how many of us know how well our website performs in other areas?

Do you know what your website conversion rate is or how many unique and repeat visitors you get to your site? The answers to these questions are the key to getting your website to make a positive contribution to your profits… And to maximising those profits.

A number of my clients take advantage of Google’s free Analytics software to keep tabs on their website’s performance. Google Analytics is an extremely useful tool but it can be tricky to present your analysis to colleagues and track trends.

To help you get a better understanding of your Google Analytics reports, Branch Out has teamed up with the Excel experts at Working Data and we will be bringing you simple guidelines on preparing user-friendly reports from Analytics over the next couple of months.

If you don’t yet have Google Analytics (or any other web stats software) in place, this newsletter is for you! An analysis package will give you the information you need to take the guess work out of your website’s performance. There are many different suppliers but Google Analytics is free, easy to install and widespread. The set up explanation given on the Google Analytics Installation Guide should get you started.

Setting your Google Analytics goals is usually straightforward for an e-commerce site. Equally, if you have a newsletter, sign ups are well worth tracking. However, for sites which are content rich, it can also be useful to track the time spent on particular pages of the site – this gives a good measure of levels of interest in the content. Take a look at Google’s Conversion University for information on how to track the length of time spent on a page.

Next month’s newsletter will introduce you to the steps you will need to take data out of your Google Analytics reports and present valuable information to colleagues. With this information, you will be able to make important decisions about the aspects of your site which work well…or not so well. With facts at your finger tips, you will be able to make sound investment decisions to ensure your website generates profits for your business for the future. Web stats analysis is rarely seen as glamorous but it can provide stunning revelations – one company we worked with discovered that over 99.9% of visitors didn’t even wait for their homepage to download. With the web stats to help us, we increased online sales by 200% and enquiries by an incredible 1000%. We were also able to guide ongoing investment decisions and monitor other important outcomes.

If you would like further advice on using web stats in your business or if you are looking for independent strategic advice on how to make your e-marketing fly in 2008, please call us on 01608 737653 or email me, Kate Barlow for a free, confidential and independent conversation.

Kind regards,

Kate Barlow

You may copy or distribute this newsletter as long as this copyright notice and full information about contacting the author are attached. The author is: Kate Barlow of Branch Out Internet Marketing, The Paddocks, Lower Nill Farm, Hook Norton, OX15 5DG, UK. Contact kate.barlow@branchout-internetmarketing.com or Tel: 01608 737653, Fax: 01608 737653.

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