Where are visitors coming from?
When you begin marketing your site, whether it is banner and link exchanges, classified ads, posting articles, press releases or pay per click advertising, you need to know what is working for you and what is wasting your time.
Referral link reports help narrow this down and allow you to see what active links on the Internet are being used to bring site visitors. For instance, let's see how our enthusiastic and dedicated dog widget Owner has been advertising.
Being on a shoestring, Owner decided to try SEO and send out weekly press releases. DogWidget.com has been indexed by several major search engines, keywords have been refined thanks to the keyword usage reports. Using the referral reports Owner sees that the SEO is beginning to roll along nicely and is even picking up a little momentum. Now for the press releases. Owner sends out a new press release each week for two months. Without the referral link report, Owner would be in the dark as to whether the links on the releases were being used, unless it was a paid distribution service (and that info is only for one release on that one site). With the referral report, Owner was able to send out press releases at no cost, and see what sites picked them up and posted them through the clicks on the contact links. So the press release about Vacation dog widgets got a lot of attention, excellent. That was time well spent. So now, Owner focus can shift so efforts are optimized.
Why is all this so important?
I must answer this question with a question: do you know how your site has been doing? If you do not have reports to give you the real-time traffic information necessary to gauge visitor performance, how can you know how your site is really doing? Are you thinking some decent sales is doing well? Or because you get nice feedback, the site is ok? If this is the case, you are settling for inferior results. This is not a solid way to manage any business, and a Website is business. Why would you want to settle for "ok" when you can get the tools at little expense that can make your site soar? Our Owner wanted to quit the "day job" and make a real living from DogWidgets.com, and with diligence and Web analytics, there is a good chance Owner will succeed, and make a lot of dogs happy at the same time! Please don't settle for "ok." Take your site to the next level. All it takes is having the right information to work with. To paraphrase an old idiom, Visitor Knowledge is Site Success.
How do they use my Website?
Your visitors are valuable. The visitors that buy your product or service are priceless; they are the key element to success. You want to make them happy and keep them coming back. You also want them to spread the word about you. And yes, Web analytics can improve this as well. By knowing how visitors are actually using your site, which pages they visit, how long they view the pages they visit, what pages compel them to continue inside the site (clickstream), and what pages they use to leave your site (exit page) will tell you a great deal. For instance, back to our dog widget site. Owner sees that the Uses for Widgets page seems to hold the visitor longer than other information pages. It was written with humor and has a fun, clean look. Wow, a winner page. However, Rainy Day Widget shows as a big exit page. Not a good page, it appears to kill the site visits. Ok, Owner knows that Rainy Day page needs some redesign and rewriting fast.
Don't let your Website stall like a rainy day widget. As with any business, a Website is needing continual marketing and refinement to stay focused and on target. You need to keep on top of your markets, keep fresh, interesting and compelling content, keep your site available to those who want your product or service. Staying alive on the Web means you need visitors ... visitors who are looking for what you have to offer. With good Web analytics you have the tools you need to put your site in front of your target market, increase your ROI and find success on the Internet. And isn't this why you have a Website?
About The Author
Cherie' Davidson is content and marketing manager for VisiStat.com (http://www.visistat.com). VisiStat is a detailed, real-time site traffic and Web analytics report service that is focused on ease of use and user-friendliness. VisiStat's goal is to help site entrepreneurs make the most of their site marketing and search engine optimization efforts - to be a virtual "goldmine" for marketing.
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