Are you getting it every week?

Some people like it less often, some like it more often.  For many, once a week is about right. 

We are, of course, talking about website traffic analysis!

Hundreds of eyes glaze over in union. 

But wait. What if, through analysing the patterns of the visitors to your website, you gained much higher levels of business?  On the flipside of that, how much business could you be losing by not getting it more often?

Historically, Custwin gave all clients a monthly report, which often delved into the type of website traffic that was being generated, and where there were missed opportunities.  In 2010 this has changed and all new clients are encouraged to receive a weekly report that, when read and responded to, leads to more business gained.

The principle is very simple:

1. Clients record details of enquiries gained, including dates and times.

2. Custwin proves to clients what led to each enquiry gained through comparing enquiry dates and times to website statistics data.

3. Custwin also identifies missed opportunities that could be capitalised on.

Whoever you use to help with analysing website statistics, or whether you do it yourself, analysing once a week is generally about right.   Apart from gaining a strong picture of what is leading to the enquiries you’re getting you will be able to identify:

1. Names of companies that have been to your website and what they were interested in (this doesn’t always apply and is mostly relevant for B2B businesses).  If those companies didn’t make contact then you have the opportunity to find a way to make contact with them while their visit to your website is still fresh because it was from within the past week.  Custwin clients have won a lot of business this way, that would otherwise have been lost.
   

2. Parts of the website that are consistently losing potential customers.  If 100 people land on one page of the website, move to another, and go no further then it tells you there is a problem with part of the website that needs to be rectified.  By making changes and further analysing, you start to see improvements and can then make further refinements.

Everyone wants to be top of Google and there are numerous providers who say they can do this.  Our advice to anyone would be to forget actively promoting a website until you have a clear picture of how existing levels of visitors are interacting with your website.  Only when you have made refinements that result in your website statistics improving, should you consider investing in climbing those search engine rankings or investing in PPC.

And just to reinforce the point – weekly website statistics analysis is about right for most business types because it’s more manageable than a more regular review while the data doesn't become too old if longer than a week.

If you would like any further insights into the benefits of website statistics analysis please do contact us – we’ll be happy to advise you without obligation.

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10 months to Christmas

Yes, in 10 months time, Christmas Day 2010 will have been and gone.  The food will be eaten, the credit cards hammered, and thoughts of tightening belts will be creeping in. 

But there’s a way to avoid that belt-tightening and it’s here right now.

People spend varying amounts of money on Christmas – presents, food, booze, and more.  Whatever you spend, what if it could actually be free in 2010?  It can and it’s easy – all you have to do is take a good hard look at your website.

What could be tweaked to make it more customer-focused?  Could it be listed in Google Maps?  Are there website visitors that you can’t currently identify but could be nurtured if you knew who they are?  Do you have plenty of customer testimonials in relevant pages of the website?

In short, what small things could you change on your website now that lead to higher levels of business gained, from which you can squirrel away the profits as your Christmas fund?   And then, you carry on benefiting as the changes are there until the next refinements you make.

You’re not sure?  Then contact us – we’ll identify just a few small things that will gain you more business and pay for your Christmas 2010.  Consider it a Christmas present from Custwin when you’re celebrating in December and it hasn’t actually cost you a penny.

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Think about your blog titles

Most people know that blogs are generally great for getting good natural search engine positioning, even though that positioning is sometimes relatively short-lived.  Most companies though fail to capitalise on the opportunities and usually this is through creating a blog title that isn’t fully beneficial.

Here’s an example of how a blog with a decent title can get you high in Google and lead to potential business.

We recently wrote a blog titled PPC for restaurants – amazing first day results.  While it’s not always guaranteed of course, and there are certain pre-requisites to make it happen, our blog, within 5 minutes of launch, was top of Google under the phrases ‘PPC for restaurants’, in second position for ‘ppc restaurants’ and third position for ‘restaurants ppc’.   Of course, Google search results do often vary depending on where you are, but you should see similar results.

We deliberately included ‘PPC for restaurants’ in the blog title because anyone with a restaurant (and who had heard about PPC) could feasibly type that phrase (or similar variations), would click on the link to our blog, and would see that the content shouts out “we can get results for restaurants”.

While it could be said that only a certain number of such searches would be made, only some clicks on the link acquired, and an even smaller number of enquiries that came out of them, the point is that a blog that takes a short period of time to create, with a title that is focusing on what potential clients may type, has multiple chances of attracting business.

Our advice is, if you already post blogs, to take a blog that’s roughly two months old, and copy the full title of it into the Google search box and see how well you rank for that title.  Hopefully, you’d be top or near the top for the whole title.  If not, then there are deeper issues to look into.  If you are visible though, then take a small element of the blog title and see if that gets you any ranking in the Google search results.  By going through that process you may prove to yourself that your blogs can get visibility and then that gives you incentive to really think about the blog titles you’re using and how you could use better wording that will feasibly be typed into search engines by your future clients.

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The negatives of the Google yellow bar

Some people call it the yellow bar, some the ‘champagne bar’, and there are other names as well.  We’re talking about the Sponsored Links box that appears above the main Google search results on the left-hand side of the screen.

Perception is that it’s the perfect place to be on the page – the ultimate in visibility and a sure-fire way to gain lots of clicks to the website – so many more than being in the right-hand-side Sponsored Links. 

And that’s correct – it is, but there can also be negatives to being in that prime position, of which we want to focus on just one.

The key point here is that many Google searchers don’t understand that the Sponsored Links on the left-hand-side of the page are actually paid advertising.  They type a phrase and they click through each left-hand link one by one until they find something that they’re most interested in.   Recently we saw just such an example of this and how damaging it can be.

The advertiser had a phrase of ‘wastewater treatment’ that they wanted to be highly visible under.  We had set it so that they got a positioning that was enough to attract clicks that we could then measure the success from.  As always, we didn’t go mad on getting high positioning because it makes sense to attract less clicks for less cost initially and measure the results from those.

It was then decided to make the advert much more visible when someone types ‘wastewater treatment’ and the result was positioning in the ‘yellow bar’ Sponsored Links.  The clicks then rolled in at a much higher rate and of course, a higher cost.  Many advertisers don’t look at their website statistics data and in this case would have seen numerous clicks but low levels of enquiries as a result of them.  They’d scratch their head and wonder why.  In this case though, the advertiser had a good webstats analysis package installed, which saved the day.

Through being in the ‘yellow bar’ when people typed ‘wastewater treatment’, the advertiser was exposed to numerous students who were researching the subject of wastewater treatment.  As anyone would do, those students clicked on various links to see what they could find on the subject, working their way down the left-hand-side of Google results (including the yellow bar) like knowledge-hungry beetles that haven’t eaten for months.  Of course, those types of clicks are useless to the advertiser and so in this case, the answer was to reduce the cost per click, which put the advert back over to the right-hand-side Sponsored Links and so avoiding the “click on everything in the left-hand-side” brigade, while being visible enough to attract the attention of real potential clients.

If the advertiser hadn’t been able to identify (through their webstats tracking) that there were visits from numerous educational establishments, they wouldn’t have had a clue why their yellow bar positioning was damaging them.  Having that analytical weapon up their sleeve they were able to rectify the situation quickly.

Of course, being positioned in the yellow bar Sponsored Links can be highly beneficial for many types of businesses but it does require careful thought to avoid costly mistakes.

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Twitter - from online to offline and back

Many people are sceptical about Twitter and don’t understand how it can generate business.  We were the same until during last year and although it’s fair to say that Custwin aren’t the most prolific Twitter users (hey, we’ve all got actual work to do!), dipping a toe in the Twitter waters has brought us business results which may be of interest to you.

Meeting a guy at a networking night, who owns a pub, is what started us off.  We had a Twitter account (custwin) and started following him and although we couldn’t quite see the point (from a business perspective) of tweets about pretty much anything, we started to see the interaction between him and other people.

After a short time we became aware of a Tweet Up he runs at his pub, which basically involves roughly 20-30 twitterers meeting up for a pub lunch once a month.  Within a few months of going to that, more contacts were made both via Twitter and offline, and relationships started to form - both business and social.   Those few short months later we’ve found the benefits of just that strand of our Twittering to be as follows:

1. Through following tweets we get a better feel for what makes the individual people (many who we’ve met) tick.  Such insights can be useful in business.
   

2. Through meeting people at the lunches and follow-ups from there, we’ve been linked to other people and yes, we’ve gained business from the relationships built.
   

3. Knowledge has been gained in so many different subjects.
   

4. We’ve had the opportunity to see if trust can be built with potential suppliers of services to Custwin and our clients.

So we started online with a few tweets and following a few people, then we took it offline by going to the tweet up lunches.  Recently that’s come back to online again in the form of an email from a Twitter contact that’s led to business.  Just one bit of business of course, but adding up the combined time and cost of those Tweet ups and the time on Twitter, it’s miniscule compared to the ongoing monthly income from the new client.  And that’s just from using Twitter a tiny amount compared to most people.

Along the way we’ve seen some Twitterers who pop up all the time just blatantly trying to sell what they offer and wondering why it doesn’t work.  Most people ‘get it’ though and use a combination of useful information sharing and a sprinkle of their personalities as part of their tweets, and that builds trust and relationships.

We’ve now set a new target to gain just another two new clients this year, that are proven to have originated from Twitter in some way.  That’s a very small target and probably easily attainable. When we get there, we’ll let you know and perhaps, if not already active, Twitter may become something of more interest in your own business.

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