"...Web analytics is becoming one of the hot sectors in Internet marketing and e-commerce technology. Increasingly, brand and e-commerce managers -- under pressure to deliver a return oninvestment -- are looking to the technology to help shape and optimize their Web sites." Internet.com, October 28, 2002
The goal of any web presence should be to improve the business as a whole and complement its offline marketing and sales efforts. In other words, to help it achieve maximum profitability.
In order to do this, your online strategy must:
Drive targeted traffic to your site, persuade site visitors to take the desired actions you want them to take, and use Web metrics to analyze and measure user behavior.
Performing these objectives correctly will ensure that you have an effective marketing campaign and increased sales for your business.
Let's look at each of these objectives further:
Objective 1: Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Site
Driving targeted traffic begins with a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign including pay-per-click advertising (PPC) and a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.
It's important to determine which keywords are worth pursuing in your PPC and SEO efforts. Tools like Wordtrackershould be used to generate a list of possible keyword phrases. Determine how frequently each phrase is searched for, and evaluate which are feasible enough to put efforts into by checking how steep the competition is. Make your selections and test them out in your PPC and SEO campaigns.
Researching and selecting effective keywords is extremely important. Be sure to select keywords that your target market would use to find you. With web metrics and analysis in place, you will be able to tell where people are coming from, what keywords they used to find you, and whether they are taking the desired actions on your site. If the wrong keywords are chosen, you may find that you have high rankings, but the wrong audience is visiting.
Objective 2: Persuade Your Web Site Visitors To Take the Desired Action
Whether you are selling a product or service, obtaining newsletter subscribers, or enticing people to download a software demo, your ultimate goal is getting your site visitors to take a desired action. In order to do this you must have a compelling site that draws the visitor in, and then guides them to the goal.
Design and site architecture factors such as usability, navigation, content, and ad copy all come into play here. The key is to monitor how well these factors work at persuading your visitors into taking action. With web metrics you can monitor everything and see what's working and what's not. Armed with this knowledge, you can make the appropriate changes to your site; continue your monitoring, and repeat the process until you get an increase in the desired outcome.
Objective 3: Use Web Metrics To Analyze Visitor Behavior
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About The Author: Eric Bonnici is the Director of Internet Marketing and Development at Alexander Joseph and Associates and has been doing business on the Internet since 1998.
