So, it’s that time again, your weekly installment of marketing hints, tips and questions answered comes to you this time in the form of an insight into analytics.
Online benefits from one huge plus when it comes to understanding your market and audience – the ability to analyse their behaviour on your site! The information you can gain from using analytics is vital in targeting your marketing and tailoring your site. That’s why I refer to analytics as ‘my lovable know-it-all friend’.
A good place to start would be to look at the amount of new customers you are getting and the amount of returning customers you have. If you are receiving a higher percentage of new customers then you should tailor your content to reaffirm your USPs (unique selling points) and company’s strengths to assure them that they are making the right choice by coming to and purchasing from you. But if the majority of your customers are returning ones then perhaps it is an idea to promote loyalty schemes and benefits of buying from you, something that will also encourage new visitors to become customers.
Next you should focus on where your traffic is coming from, in other words, what is the source of your traffic? Is it from an email you have sent them? Did they come to you directly i.e. by typing your URL in? Maybe they are a product of ppc advertising (pay per click search) or perhaps they came to you from a link on another site – this would be a referral. The fundamental reason for doing this is so you can look at your online strategy and see whether the areas you are spending time and money on are yielding positive results or whether you need to change your focus and invest elsewhere. And much like before, analytics will tell you whether these are new or returning customers.
Looking at the above point a little more closely, analytics has the ability to tell you what time of day people are visiting your site giving you the tools to deduce when your busiest period is and therefore when you should be maximising your communication and contact. As a general, online activity tends to be at its highest around late noon and just before close of play, use this information to your advantage. There is no point sending an email to customers or potential customers at 6am if they are shown not to visit your site until 5pm…target customers when they want to visit and your conversion rate should improve.
Another handy piece of info. you can gain from analytics is the type of technology your customers are using to go online. Is it via a desktop or laptop, or are they accessing the internet via their mobile or ipad. The answer to this will determine whether you should consider making your site mobile optimised. You should also look at the browser or operating system they are using and then test them all to make sure your site performs in each one.
You can also use analytics to help you reach the goal of your site. Maybe your goal is to convert more visitors into customers, maybe you want visitors to sign up for or enquire about something so you want their data or perhaps you simply want them to make a purchase. You can set up analytics to tell you how many people are completing your set goal. Is it 1%, 10% or 100%? Monitor by channel and tweak your communication to see if you can improve your existing percentage.
Focusing on content now, what pages are your users visiting and entering your site via? Is it your homepage? A specific landing page? Your blog or a product page? How long do they stay on each page for, where do they go and do they exit on the same page they landed on? If the answer to the last question is yes, perhaps you need to look at whether that page is consistent with your other pages, poorly set up or even working at all.
Using analytics to its full potential gives you a wealth of information that you otherwise would not find out or would spend a lot of time and resources trying to find out. If you want to know more about how analytics can help you form a strategy or improve your marketing activity we are more than happy to help. Just get in touch via http://debutmarketing.co.uk/contact-us/ and we will be more than pleased to answer your query.
Next week I will speak about how websites are viewed by customer (eyes tracks and all that) and ultimately how a website review could be just what you need.