Bottlenecks To Implementing Web Analytics

“34% of Fortune 500 Companies Don’t Use Analytics”

Wow.

Are you making data driven decisions in your business? Did you know you can make money with analytics?

What are your bottlenecks for using web analytics? Let us know in the comments or stop by our forums!

5 Ways To Make Money With Google Analytics

That’s right – you can make money with Google Analytics…

How? Look at your data!

1. Keywords

Are people arriving to your site for specific keywords – not finding anything – and leaving? Perhaps its time to add to your inventory or list of services!  Perhaps you sell brown shoes and people come to your website looking for blue shoes… Maybe you should sell those too?

2. Site Search

Are people searching your site for a product you are not selling? Are a lot of people searching for that product? Maybe you should start selling that product! You’d never know if you didn’t check your analytics data. Maybe you get 100 searches a month for “12 ft HDMI cable” and you only sell 6 foot cables. Maybe it’s time to add that to your inventory?

3. Optimization

Are people landing on your website from search or advertisements looking to buy a product you sell – and can’t find it? You can tell by studying the bounce rates of your inbound search traffic and AdWords traffic. If you shine light on this problem by studying data – you can optimize your site to increase conversions.

4. Test Everything

It sounds silly but simple things like moving buttons, changing text, and limiting options can have a huge effect on the overall conversion rate of your website. For instance – headline copy for your product may be confusing users. If you test different variations of that copy – Google Analytics will tell you which converted the best. Why chance it?

5. Identify New Geographic Markets

Is someone searching for your restaurant across town? Is someone searching for your consulting services across the state? Does someone want to buy your product from Australia? Analytics data will answer these questions and help you define new geographic markets to enter and advertise to.

6. Yes, you get an extra tip

Are your products seasonal? Perhaps you’d never know if you didn’t look in your web analytics. Do more people order your pizza in the winter? Are people more apt to buy your shoes in the summer? Does most of your search traffic come during the holidays? With information like this you can optimize your landing pages and hone your advertising.

How do you make money with Google Analytics? Let us know in the comments or jump in the forums!

img via flickr

Connect Facebook To Twitter – Episode 2

In our second episode of the Web Strategy Workshop podcast we want to show you how to connect Facebook to Twitter on your Facebook Pages.

Show Links

• Facebook Announcement – Publishing to Twitter from Facebook Pages
• Link to get started publishing to Twitter from Facebook Pages
• Join th Web Strategy Workshop Facebook Page
• Follow Us On Twitter
• Subscribe to our Web Strategy Podcast on iTunes

If you have any questions on posting to Twitter from your Facebook Page – let us know in the comments or join in on the forum discussion!

Web Strategy Outposts – Episode 1

In this episode we discuss how you can join the community and find the best content on web strategy topics.

UPDATE – Some of the quick links – like WebStrategyWorkshop.com/facebook mentioned in the video are not working at the moment due to an incompatibility with a WordPress plugin and the latest WP update. Please use the links below instead.

Links

• Web Strategy Forum – a web strategy forum for discussions on posts, podcasts, and anything else
• Web Strategy Digest – a digest of links from around the web that are important in developing a web strategy
• Web Strategy Links – links submitted and voted on by the community
• Facebook Page – our facebook page – join the fun!
• FriendFeed Group – important topics and discussions from around the web
• Diigo Group – links and discussions on web strategy
• Follow us on Twitter – we post links, posts, podcasts – updates on everything above

The Skinny On Google Caffeine – From Matt Cutts

What affect will Google Caffeine have on your website?

Matt Cutts, from Google, explains…

How much of an impact will Caffeine have on results? Matt says there will, hopefully, not be a big difference. Google will integrate Caffeine slowly and take user feedback into consideration.

Matt says, “If we push forward as fast as we can, double down on innovation and try to do the best that we can, [and] do the right thing for users, everything else will work out.”

The crew at WebProNews talks to Matt…

5 Tips For Creating A Data Driven Business

Are you often wondering if you should sell that new product?

Or if you should lower your prices?

Or if you should reduce your inventory?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to make these decisions based on your “gut feeling”? If you let data decide you will be much better off. The data is there – and it’s free. You just need to sit down and analyze it, or hire someone to do it for you…

A data driven business is one where actions and decisions are based on data – in our case web analytics data.

Here are 5 Tips for Creating a Data-Driven Business

1. Create and Measure Goals

2. Make Business Sense of Your Data

3. Test Your Decisions

4. Segment Data to Find Meaning and Behavior

5. Research Before You Launch

Do you have any questions on data driven decisions? Let us know in the comments or chime in at the forums!

2 Tips Before You Launch Your Internet Marketing Campaign

Before you launch a product or website you should do some research in the niche you are targeting. Here are two research techniques to hone your internet marketing campaign – before you launch…

1. Keyword Research

• Google Insights
• Google Keywords
• Search For Competition

2. Social Media Research

• Twitter Search
• Facebook Search
• FriendFeed Search

These techniques can help you determine the need in the market and if there is heavy competition – both very important to know before you start your long uphill battle.

Segmenting Data In Web Analytics

When creating a data driven business it’s important to segment the data you analyze to study behavior rather than meaningless aggregate statistics like visitors and page views.

Google Webmaster Tools – Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts discusses using Google Webmaster Tools to optimize your websiite.

The Big Google Website Optimizer Post

I once tweeted “If you are selling on the web and not using Google Website Optimizer than you are missing out”. I still firmly believe this because it allows you to test and hone not only your landing pages – but your advertisements as well. The first thing we tell our web strategy clients is to pick one of five web strategy goals. These goals range from email subscription opt-in to actually making a sale – and Google Website Optimizer helps you to find the best path and methods to reach those goals.

The easiest way to explain Google Website Optimizer is that it allows you to do A/B split testing.

Here’s an example…

Let’s say you are a plumber and your primary source of lead generation is people calling you for a free estimate after arriving to your site from a Google AdWords ad when they search for “plumber Des Moines”. On that page you have a simple sign-up form but you want to see if adding a video demonstration will help. With Google Website Optimizer you can setup an entirely new page with your video and new contact form and test which one gets the most people to sign up. It’s that simple.

What is Google Website Optimizer?

And why do you need it? Here is Google Website Optimizer in 60 seconds

[Read more]

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