Advantages of Web Analytics

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Web analytics comes close to being the top choice for a paid listing ROI tracking solution. Because it's critical for assessing all Internet marketing efforts, web analytics may become part of your marketing foundation even before you give it extra points for the search engine advertising component.

Data That Improves Site Conversions

Without web analytics, marketers are clueless about how their site serves, or doesn't serve, their site visitors . This information is the Holy Grail of understanding online customers.

Whereas other ROI tracking solutions count the number of paid listing clicks and resulting sales, they miss the customers' travels within the web site. Worse yet, they don't identify shopping abandonment patterns. Web analytics logs all of this data and more. How can this information help marketers? Let's look at a couple of basic scenarios.

Web Analytics Data

Marketers' Potential Responses

Most popular entry pages

On these pages, do the following:

  • Place product offers, rotate weekly

  • Promote online store

  • Offer free subscription to the e-zine

  • Sell advertising

  • Include toll-free phone number

  • Remind visitors to bookmark these pages

Most popular exit pages

On these pages, do the following:

  • Promote "limited time" offer

  • Offer coupon in exchange for email address

  • Launch exit pop-up survey asking why their needs weren't met (multiple choice)

Visits by day of the week

On these pages, do the following:

  • Replace offers on the least-visited day

  • Ramp up sales pitch in web page marketing copy daily until most-popular day

  • On days following the most popular one, promote "liquidation"or "last chance" sale

  • Increase Pay-For-Placement positions on search engines during strong-performing days, lower positions on poor-performing days

  • Buy sponsorships in content- related e-zines that email 24 ‚ 48 hours before best sales days

Think of the insight you'll gain with web analytics. You'll see where your customers are going and what they're doing in your online store or sales office. You'll even see how they landed on your site, which gives you ideas for possible marketing partnerships, or helps you evaluate current ones. Add a splash of site design and copywriting creativity to your analysis, and you'll figure out how to get a greater number of your site visitors to buy. That'll lower your customer acquisition costs across all of your marketing campaigns .

Drill into Search Engine Marketing

E-commerce solutions provide limited search engine marketing data, if any. Affiliate programs aren't set up to conveniently track it at all, although marketers could tweak them to do so. Web analytics, on the other hand, scores superior marks in this area. These solutions were created to drill deep into web site data. As an example, see ClickTracks' campaign tracking capabilities as related to search engines.

Important

Daypart targeting is the ability to market to consumers during a specified time of the day.


ClickTracks 4.0 Campaign Tracking

Reporting by campaign (search engine and general marketing):

  • Number of purchasing visitors*

  • Conversion rates*

  • The revenue generated by each campaign*

  • The number of visitors each campaign brought to the site

  • Cost per visitor and total cost

  • Revenue per purchasing visitor and per visitor*

(*features only available in ClickTracks Professional 4.0)

Reporting by keyword (organic and pay-per-click listings)

  • Total visitors

  • Percentage of visitors

  • Cost of visitors from pay-per-click campaigns

  • Average cost of pay-per-click visitors

  • Average time on site

  • Percentage of short visits


Not to be outdone, Urchin recently released a campaign tracking module, an optional add-on to their main software product. This module enables marketers to track click fraud activity and daypart targeting, among other search engine-specific actions. Both the ClickTracks and Urchin examples represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of what search engine-specific data is available.

All Companies Can Participate

All companies, large and small, can afford web analytics. Solution providers present a variety of software or services to meet marketers' data analysis needs. There are versions of HitBox, WebTrends, and ClickTracks that start at less than $50 per month. Referring traffic from search engines is included in the small business versions, but not all offer ROI tracking. Find out the reporting details from the product information on providers' web sites. It's helpful when vendors , such as ClickTracks, show a product comparison chart to help marketers determine the best solution for their business (Figure 18.3).

Figure 18.3. ClickTracks presents a side-by-side comparison chart of their web analytics tools to help marketers choose the edition that's right for them.

A great way for small business to get site statistics reports for free, or at a low fee, is to host their web sites with Internet service providers (ISPs) who have purchased a web analytics multi- user license. For example, NTT/Verio and Earthlink include Urchin reports with their hosting service.

This brings up an important point: Ask your current ISP if traffic statistics are included in your hosting agreement. Storing the data for these reports takes up server space, so unless you ask, these reports generally aren't made available. One simple email or phone call can change that ‚ at no additional charge. E-commerce solution providers, including Yahoo!, might offer statistics as part of their merchant solutions, too.

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Search Engine Advertising. Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales
Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0321495993
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 155

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