Business Success In 2010

It’s come to that time of year again when everyone chucks in their opinion of what will make a successful 2010.   There have been vast changes within the Internet space in 2009, not least of which has been the explosion in social media and the challenges companies face in grasping it. 

While that’s important, for most businesses, the foundations of success in 2010 come not from being fantastic on Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging etc. etc. but with something much more basic than that.

That ‘something’ is the need to dedicate time and resources to fully understanding each visitor to your website. 
 
“But we’ve got Google Analytics” comes the cry back.  That may be the case but having Google Analytics running in the background of a website is like knowing everything about a potential customer except for their phone number, email, or company name.    Most companies have a reasonable amount of traffic to their website each month, but how many focus on what they’re gaining from those visitors and instead focus more on actively promoting their website?  Unfortunately, far too many.

Let’s say that a business gets 1,000 visitors to its website each month.  Through a certain level of analysis the business thinks that they gained 50 enquiries (5%).  Those 50 enquiries may result in a good level of business and the company may be happy.  But what about the other 95%?   What’s typical is that a business will throw more money at promoting the website.  So, the visitors go up to 1,500 each month and the business gets 75 enquiries.  Still 5% and still losing 95%   It seems like a winning strategy when the business is coming in but what happens when the 5% goes down to 4% and lower, because competitors have created a stronger website presence?   Suddenly things aren’t so rosy.
The answer for all businesses is to start analysing website visitor patterns in more detail.  Yes, it takes time to do but that time will be recouped several times over when the analysis leads to inspiration about why certain visitors aren’t making contact with the company.

One major thing that Custwin has noticed in 2009 is that the clients who are using a decent (but not costly) software package to track their visitor patterns, and who have acted on the patterns they’ve been seeing, are those clients that are getting stronger websites that convert more visitors to enquiries.   They’re keeping records of enquiries so that they can be compared to the website visitor data.  They’re looking at the percentages of visitors who are making contact, are asking our advice, and are moving forwards all the time.  They’re understanding that yes, it IS possible to identify which companies have visited the website, what they typed into Google, and how long they spent on each page … and they’re capitalising on that information.

This time of year is all about making resolutions, including business resolutions and there will be a multitude of tempting things to get into.   So yes, play with Twitter, start blogging, and all sorts of other ways that will get you and your website noticed more.  But when it comes to fundamental basics, and although it may not sound very exciting in comparison, having a complete view of your website visitor patterns is the foundation block that will lead to a much more successful 2010.

If you would like no-obligation advice about how to fully understand your website visitor patterns then please do contact us – we’ll be happy to help you have a great boost to 2010.

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Christmas Day Email

You may be wondering why you’re receiving this email on Christmas Day.  In reality, it’s hoped that you’re not actually reading it on Christmas Day or even for a few days afterwards.  

Dedicated though Custwin is, we’re not daft enough to be working on Christmas Day and of course, the newsletter has been timed to be sent on Christmas Day.  But why?

For now, let’s just call it an experiment.  An experiment in who clicks on what, when, and why.  We’ll give you the results of the experiment in the January 2010 edition.

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Client Focus: Plane & Simple

Plane & Simple were introduced to Custwin as a company that was already successful but wanted to take the business to the next level.  The purpose of profiling Plane & Simple in this email newsletter is to demonstrate how much a company can advance when the right attitude/mindset is applied.  Or, another way of putting this is that within just a few months, big and positive differences were noticeable.  But also challenges.

Plane & Simple design, supply, and install high quality timber products for commercial and domestic clients across the UK.  In particular demand are products for playgrounds in schools and public spaces (e.g. climbing frames, towers, play areas).  Although already successful, Plane & Simple wanted to see what PPC advertising could achieve for the company and within a short time Custwin had generated quality traffic to the website. 

Keeping within a defined monthly budget for Google clicks we generated numerous clicks to the website from people typing phrases such as ‘school playground equipment’, ‘play towers’, and numerous other phrases.  But driving traffic to a website is only useful as long as the traffic is converting to enquiries, which means that the website has to be strong enough to encourage visitors to make contact.

Working with Plane & Simple, we looked at the individual visitor paths through the website, identifying the names of organisations that had visited the website (for example, schools), what they had typed into Google, and how they moved through the website.  Of primary importance though was to compare the number of PPC clicks to the number and quality of enquiries gained.  Through a strong Custwin-Client relationship we discussed levels of enquiries and implemented some tweaks to the website that contributed to higher conversions from clicks to enquiries.

We then hit a challenge that although a nice challenge to have, still needed to be addressed.  Unlike many companies within their industry, and while not the largest of the companies, Plane & Simple have a very strong focus on selling an idea and not a product.   From the time that someone makes contact, the service is highly bespoke and as part of the sales process extensive work goes into liaison with the potential client and also the production of top quality presentation materials.   In short, a huge amount of effort goes in so that there is much higher potential to win each contract.   The best way this could be summarised would be:

“If you have an idea of something that needs to be built (e.g. playground equipment) then we will help you explore that idea until you’ve decided on the highly bespoke end result that is most desirable.  We will then provide you with all the pre-sale information that you could possibly need, including detailed drawings and design concepts.  Only after all that is supplied can a sale be completed.”

Another way of putting this is that competitors may be content to produce a sales pitch in a certain (basic) format but Plane & Simple put extensive effort in to ensure that the potential client gets everything they could possibly need.   Understandably, with this focus on quality of service, the time to produce quality proposals can be extensive.
The challenge then, is how to cope with an influx of new potential business from the PPC campaign/website, which raised enquiries to a level that hadn’t been experienced beforehand.

The answer to this is best answered by a comment from Nigel Moon, one of the Plane & Simple directors …

“You’ve created us a challenge that’s a good challenge for any business to have.  We have increased levels of enquiries that we need to ensure are handled with the same high level of quality as always.  As a result the business has had to consider an extra sales position to cope with the demand.”

What’s great in this particular situation is that we’re currently just scratching the surface on the levels of traffic that can be sent to the Plane & Simple website and so there are huge opportunities yet to be capitalised on.   From the perspective of Custwin, the work is particularly enjoyable because there is strong dialogue with Plane & Simple and an internal commitment to keep analysing and refining, which leads to more and more business being gained.  More business being gained means happy clients, which can only be a good thing.

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Scrooge Google

Perhaps it’s a strange coincidence that four of the letters in the word ‘Scrooge’ also feature prominently in the word ‘Google’ but the similarity struck home on 24th December when an email came in from Google to advertisers.   On the surface, it was a nice gesture from Google, who are giving $20 million to charities as a Christmas gift (and of course, it was), but it’s worth digging beneath the surface to see just how generous the donation is.

The link, which will likely have a limited visibility is http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/advertising/holiday2009/ and it basically says that Google are committing $20 million to charities because they’re having their toughest year in decades.   But let’s put that into a few perspectives …

Perspective 1 – a drop in the ocean

Google have an annual turnover of roughly $20 billion.  They’re giving charities $20 million.  That works out at 0.1% of annual turnover.  Wow!  That’s going to really dent their pockets.   “But at least they’re doing something” you may say and you’d be right.  So, let’s take a small business that’s turning over £200,000 – they could give 0.1% of their turnover to charity, which would be £200.   That’s affordable.  Or, they could double Google’s generosity by giving away a whole 0.2% of their turnover and doubling it to £400 to charity.  It’s almost tempting to do that, just to feel more generous than Google.

Perspective 2 – it’s not Google who are giving

$20 million going out of Google’s pockets makes no difference to them at all.  From all the Google Adwords campaigns we’ve looked at this year we’ve been able to identify hundreds of thousands of pounds that were previously being wasted through not understanding how to get the best out of Adwords.  The Google system effectively lets people make mistakes with their advertising budgets and the money just rolls into the Google bank.    If we’ve been able to identify such wastage then others in our industry will also be able to do the same with Adwords campaigns they see and the figures soon add up to serious numbers.  It’s not inconceivable that $20 million worth of revenue to Google is wasted worldwide in a single day.   So the reality is that Google’s advertisers are paying the charities … and a whole lot more besides, purely from not understanding how to make the best use of Adwords.

Having said all that, $20 million is $20 million and the charities will be very grateful for that support so cynicism aside, and for those that don’t think deeper, it’s still good PR for Google.

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What's In Your Company Name?

Custwin are very keen for clients to analyse as much as possible about visitors to their websites but for those who aren’t so keen there’s a gentle introduction that can lead to a higher level of interest.  That introduction comes in the form of analysing who is searching for your company name online and, when they find your website, what do they look at?    Whether it’s just curiosity or something else, for most people, it’s interesting to find out who is interested in their company name and why.

Looking at a few scenarios …

Scenario 1 – You’ve been to an event and have met some people and given out business cards/materials.  You hope that some of those people will make contact with you.  You look at your website statistics and identify that people from some of the companies that you’d met have been to your website and are looking at certain pages.  You know this because they either typed your company name into Google or directly typed the url.   With the knowledge that there’s some form of interest from that company you may be able to follow that up.

Scenario 2 – You’ve had an enquiry come in via your website and you find that the person had searched for your company name, but you’ve never heard of the person making the enquiry.  By identifying the fact that they searched for your company name you can start a dialogue with them to find out how they found out about you in the first place, which probably gives you additional useful information (for example, a mutual contact may have recommended them).

Scenario 3 – Competitors are keeping an eye on what you’re doing on your website.  If they’ve searched for you by company name then they’ll leave a trail of their movements through your website.  Being alert to competitors looking at your website helps you to keep on your toes, ensuring that you stay one step ahead of what they’re doing.

Scenario 4 – Your company has been actively marketing itself in a number of ways and you want to get an idea of how many searches there have been for your company name within a given time period compared to before the active marketing started.

Scenario 5 – Catch the liars!  When someone contacts you, trying to sell you something, flattering you about how great your website is, by looking at your website statistics you’ll find out whether they had typed your company name or not.   If they had, and you see that in reality they looked at hardly any of your website then it gives you a good impression of what you’re dealing with.

Overall, it’s just generally ‘interesting’ to see who has typed your company name, and what they’ve looked at on the website but it can spark off many further thoughts.  If those further thoughts include a wish to dig deeper into analysing visitor patterns on your website in general, then you’ll one day realise that some of your future success was sparked by taking an interest in your own company name.

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