Any web technology company worth its salt understands the importance of website analytics. Without analytics you can't know if your website is doing what you need and want it to do. Web site analytics applications are often underutilized by small and medium size businesses. For many businesses lack of internal resources and confusion over the data received becomes a barrier to really taking advantage of the value that website analytics have to offer.
Those who do see the value in their website stats are those who understand that a website isn't something that you build and leave alone for the next six months. Successful web development is ongoing and evolving. The easiest part is getting your website up – the real work comes afterwards. The challenge is in figuring out what works and what doesn't and making the necessary modifications. Big or small - your website is something that should constantly evolve. Without website analytics there will be no progress. Whether your website is a lead generation tool or a store to sell products you must understand how visitors are using your site. Website analytics provide the key to understanding how your clients (current and potential) utilize your website. How they are getting to your site, what makes them leave and what makes them stay? Having the answers to these questions will help you understand what you need to do to get more leads or make more sales.
Taking the time to understand what is happening on your website can actually save you time and money. More than finding out who is on your website, tracking can determine the effectiveness of email campaigns, content, offline activities and partnerships. It is one of the most important tools a marketing professional can have.
Once you've examined your web analytics here are some tips for increasing your website's popularity.
- Produce valuable content - There has to be something on your site that makes your audience come back. This usually comes in the form of content. Become a resource for your users by providing useful documents, articles and links.
- Develop new features / Make changes based on user data - Use your web analytics to determine what is being used on your website and develop around that. You may not be getting any traffic in a particular area of the site that you feel has a lot of value. Take a look at terminology, architecture and usability to make sure you aren't unknowingly keeping users out.
- Competitive analysis - Check out your competition and find out what they are doing to attract customers. Track what changes they have made and find out what their search engine ranking is.
- Keywords - Change your keywords. Your website analytics tool will tell you what keywords are bringing people to your site. Make sure you change those that aren't working.
- Create partnerships – Submit articles to industry websites and create partnerships with supporting organizations. It's not only the content on your website that will drive traffic bring to you – it's also the content on other sites.
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Nathalie says: Glad to see you bring this up. Everyone talks about wanting to "see the results" but rarely do we bother reviewing our site once it is up. I am trying to do this within my organization, but they haven't invested in the proper tools so my task is somewhat more difficult. I may print this off and leave it on my VP's desk...! |
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