Where have you been.....

.."how do you know where to go if you don't know where you've been?"

If you don't know your websites statistics or analytical data then listen up!!!!

Improving website performance is key for any business who wishes to grow. But how do you measure this success? Do you have a protocol established for reviewing or analyzing this data?

If you have a webmaster or you are paying a consultant to manage your website, they better be able to answer those questions. And if they are not sharing this data with you, you should be questioning them about it.

There are FREE applications that provide you code to put on your websites to track and capture all this data, like Google Analytics. According to an article from Six Revisions, Five Favorite Web Applications For Designers, Google Analytics was one of the best analytical tools out there regardless of price.

I have seen firsthand the ease of use and the breadth of information these analytical applications can provide.

Example: Who cares how many visitors come to your site if they only stay a few seconds? Is that enough time for them to really understand what you offer? So, knowing the time that the average visitor spends on your site can help you determine whether or not your homepage is really grabbing the attention of your visitors. If they aren't staying long enough chances are they are missing whatever it is that makes you special and therefore you are missing the opportunity to grab a new user/customer.

Your first step in understanding all of this is to set up a Google account for yourself, or ask your IT professional to help you. You will need to put this code on and begin capturing this data for about 60 days. After the 60 day time period you can access this data and export it very easily, even to a pdf pretty instantaneously. Trust me I've done it...you can too.

I recommend doing this asap. Then look at the who, what, where and when on your site and begin to make some strategic decisions about how your site is operating currently, what is it providing and where is their growth potential. Making those decisions can be tough, this is when a good consultant, and there out there can help you create a plan. Trust me you need a plan.

Growing your online presence doesn't always mean spending money. We'll get to that later in other blogs. Over the next week or so I'll be evaluating each of these Five Favorite Web Applications and filling you on how and if you can use them to grow your business.

"Advertising = Clicks"

It's generally an accepted principle that in order to have a successful business you must advertise. Of course advertising increased brand awareness and hopefully, depending on how good it is, it actually helps you sell products/services. "Everyone" knows this but it's truly hard to measure the value of brand awareness. Interactive, including mobile and web advertising seems complicated and there are many buzzwords generated about "clicks", "hits", "impressions etc...
The real question, which is obviously debatable is what is the value of the seeing the message online?
I read an article published on OutSellInc by Chuck Richard, Vice President & Lead Analyst for the website entitled "Click Rate Trend A blessing in Disguise" (article not available to public, must be member). This article brings up some good discussion points about the power measurement and how we are selling it to advertisers.

I think we really need to get away from the idea that we can somehow explain to our advertisers how effective their online campaigns with a simple CTR (click through rate). Print advertising has for a long time been able to get away with simply giving it's circulation and readers gender, income and age as a value proposition...so why is it that advertisers expect more for their online campaigns? Is it something we are doing wrong?