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Anatomy of your Web Presence - Part 2: The Eyes

July 31, 2007

OK, Part two of our 13 part blog extravaganza: The Anatomy of your Online Presence.

The eyes represent watching. In part one, you used your brain and set your goals. Now you have to watch and see if your strategy works.

The great thing about the web is the level that you can measure results and maintain an accurate history of trends. I am going to discuss some of the different things you can use to watch your strategy unfold.

To begin with, do not just watch your results – react to them. If something gets great results, do it again. If something seems to be under performing, make some slight changes and see if it improves the performance.
 

Don’t just watch traffic

Don’t just watch your basic traffic trends. Sure these are important, but unless your website traffic is converting to buyers or subscribing to something, more traffic has very little value.

Here is a list of key things to measure.

  • Purchases – What percentage of visitors visit the purchase page? What percentage of visitors complete the transaction?
  • Subscribers – How many people subscribe to your eNewsletter? How about to the RSS feed of your blog?
  • Inbound links – How many other sites are linking to your site? Which are generating the most website traffic?
  • Comments – How many people are interacting with your website or blog?
  • Contacts – How many leads (Email or phone) are generated from the web?
  • Search engine ranking – Are you on the first page of major search engines for your target keywords?
  • General traffic trends – How many pages on average do visitors read?

Important stats facts

It is easy to get caught up in your own website or blog and forget the diversity of people that are arriving. If someone finds you via a search engine they may have one expectation for the site and after arriving, see that it is not what they are looking for a click away. A certain percentage of visitors to your website will always click away quickly and pull your stats down. If your average page reads is 1.5 per visitor, see if you can increase it to 2.0 by cross referencing your pages better. This does not sound like a lot, but it is a big improvements.

Some of the tools for measurement will depend on what technology you are using. For example, you eCommerce should have good reporting in it. The system should have the ability to measure every step of the purchase process and tell you how many people abandon the purchase part way through.

If you use an eNewsletter system like the eNewsletter system AWeber you will be able look at the performance of your eNewsletter sign ups and even do split tests – splitting the visibility of different forms automatically to see which one performs better. I think of it as a fun game as I try different things to see what works.

You can also measure your RSS subscriptions with Feedburner. www.feedburner.com – This site not only has the metrics advantage. It also gives you an advantage of being able to move your blog and migrate your readers with you.

Google Analytics – www.google.com/analytics is the best free service I have seen. It gives you great stats on your site and gives accurate stats on things like page reads, referrals, etc. If you have an eCommerce site, look around on the Google Analytics settings. You can request secure stats which enable it to run even on secure pages.

There are other specialty services like www.Hittail.com that will help you identify and improve your results from organic search engines.  Services like Handshake HQ help you graphically track how many new contacts you make each month, which can drive you your traffic very well.

Once your systems are doing the majority of the tracking, figure out what other things you would like to keep track of. Inbound links, Technorati authority number, comments, etc. can all be recorded in an Excel spreadsheet once a month so that you can review your results and see if you are making progress.  Sure, there is SEO software out there too, but unless you are going to actively look at improving SEO, you do not need to purchase these.

By keeping your eye on the stats, you are going to understand how your web presence works and be able to improve it on an ongoing basis.

Part 3: The Nose >>

- Thank You!

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog 

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Comments

4 Responses to “Anatomy of your Web Presence - Part 2: The Eyes”

  1. Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing Blog » » Do you have a living, breathing web presence? on July 31st, 2007 4:56 pm

    [...] Read >> [...]

  2. Chris Wilson on July 31st, 2007 11:10 pm

    Another good thing to keep track of is your Bounce Rate. This will tell you how many people come to your site expecting one thing, then see another and leave immediately.

    You mentioned this activity already, “If someone finds you via a search engine they may have one expectation for the site and after arriving, see that it is not what they are looking for a click away.”

    By keeping track of this you can figure out if your keywords and referring sites are sending you the right people. If the bounce rate gets to high, it’s time to make some adjustments. But like you suggested before, there will always be some visitors that bounce.

  3. Rory on August 1st, 2007 9:19 pm

    It is a good list of starting metrics to think about. With the new features in google analytics there is a lot of good stuff to track, length of stay etc

  4. David on August 5th, 2007 3:25 pm

    Cross referencing pages is a bit like putting down formal walkways. Looking at the stats of how visitors crossed a site always makes me think of the paths people leave in the grass across open spaces, which sociologists call them “desire lines. People do their own thing, so I always end up adapting the layout to suit the audience.

    David

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