Pop quiz: How many visitors did your web site receive last week as
part of your latest direct mail promotion? Which pages are the most popular with your customers? What was the most popular search term customers used to find your website?
If these questions have you searching for answers, you’re not alone. Unfortunately, many companies are in the dark with regards to these types of questions and ultimately, their website’s ROI (return on investment). Fortunately, there is an easy solution: web site statistics reporting. The good news is that you have been collecting this information through your web servers already. The next step is to set up a reporting tool that will give you the following information about your site’s customers:
1. Which pages are most (or least) popular with your customers
Are customers coming to your web site’s home page, and then leaving? Web reports offer a summary of the most visited pages on your site as well as the pages receiving the least amount of traffic. Knowing this information can be an enormous help in revising your site’s content in order to better meet the needs of your customers.
2. How customers are finding your site through the search engines
Reporting software offers an excellent summary of the top search engines that customers used to find your site, and, more importantly, which keywords were used to find your site. This can be a huge help in planning your search engine marketing strategy to maximize the return of your investment.
3. Tracking online/offline promotions
Imagine that you have just launched a new product or service through a large advertising campaign that includes direct mail. One of the ways you can track the effectiveness of your mailer is to include a unique web site address for prospects to learn more, such as www.yourcompany.com/promoxyz. Utilizing web site reporting enables you to monitor the number of customers visiting a specific web address to analyze the effectiveness of your campaign.
4. Where your visitors are coming from
If you are marketing toward specific larger companies, you can often see their company web address listed in your reports, which can help you pinpoint where visitors are coming from to your site.
Popular tracking software
Many software companies are offering reporting tools for web sites in two varieties: a stand alone software installation located on your web server or a hosted solution located on their web server. Some of the more popular tracking software is made by:
* Urchin (www.urchin.com)
* NetIQ’s WebTrends (www.netiq.com/webtrends)
* NetTracker (www.nettracker.com)
Prices range from $100 to $1000 for software installations and $35 to $200 per month for a hosted application.
Making the decision to invest in web site reporting software will help your company measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, develop a more accurate search engine strategy, and improve your web site to better meet the needs of your customers. So the next time someone asks you how many visitors took advantage of your latest direct mail promotion, the answer will only be a few clicks away.
