Put Your Web Audience Under the Microscope

... Enter a whole new world of customer information

Greetings!

Welcome to the latest edition of the Inside Edge--your monthly report on Internet trends and advancements that can turn your business into a more profitable e-Business.

Over the last year, several advancements have been made in the tools and techniques available for Internet marketing research. Web Analytics which started out with data and analysis related to your website traffic details has evolved into a complex and highly intuitive research methodology.

As a business owner, you can access information not only about your website visitors’ but also monitor your blog audiences, track video viewers, measure social media campaigns, and much more. Read on to find out more about consumer behaviour measurement through the next generation of Web Analytics...

Follow the trail of your customers

Market research and consumer studies have for long been the beacons for marketers, offering enlightening information on buying patterns, seasonal highs and lows, effectiveness of retail store layout, factors affecting promotions or discount offers, and so on. With the explosion of online users worldwide, several thousand businesses face the challenge of not knowing what their customers really want, how to anticipate their actions and therefore, how to encourage desired actions, i.e. conversions. The related enigma is how to deliver and meet online customer expectations before and much better than the competition can.

Analytics has the ability to put your online audiences under the microscope and study their every move, behavioral patterns and social networking. Early analytics tools and reporting started out with measuring the fundamentals, which still hold weight:

Monitoring and measuring the various sources that bring traffic to your site - landing pages, search engines, paid advertising, banners, email blasts, internal and external links, referral sites, directories, online classifieds, etc.

Site stickiness - studying site statistics and data that reveals which pages keep visitors on a site, for how long and where they leave the site. A high bounce rate and short time spent on a site overall results in lower conversions, quite simply because people are not on a site long enough to respond to the call to action. Which brings us to the next point...

Effectiveness of call to action - this is the crux of Internet marketing success - getting a high conversion rate by ensuring that the objectives and goals of your site are met with users taking the actions you want them to. Whether this is making a purchase, downloading a document (whitepaper, article, guide, reference material, tips, manual, checklist), subscribing to a newsletter or any other conversion goal.

Volume of traffic - knowing the numbers. Even though getting qualified traffic that will ultimately convert is the goal of every Internet marketer, it is also important to study overall traffic volumes and get those numbers up. Lead generation and lead nurturing still rely heavily on greater volume because a busy pipeline creates a better sales funnel and drives more results.

Going beyond the basics of site data

Today it is possible to measure the effectiveness of your blog, track your RSS feeds, view statistics about your online press release hits, monitor your Facebook advertising and profile searches, follow the "tweets" on Twitter, count the clappers on YouTube, build your career forum on LinkedIn, the list is endless. With the ever increasing buzz of social media marketing and sites like Mashable.com, you can get deep into the mind of your customer and step up engagement ratios like never before. There is whole new world of chatterboxes out there and you can leverage word of mouth online to build your brand. The trick is knowing who is talking, where, what they are saying and who is listening! WSI Analytics Reporting services will give you business intelligence to deliver what your customers want, when they want it.

WSI Internet Marketing Consultants are trained on a continual basis to remain on top of the latest trends and best practices in Web Analytics and audience measurement. Contact your local WSI Consultant to bring the light of consumer knowledge to your business.

Join us for a webinar entitled "Google Analytics: Maximize Your Marketing During a Recession" on May 28 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT. Register now.

This edition of the Inside Edge has been brought to you by Jeffrey Green, WSI. For more information about WSI Internet Solutions for your business contact us today! WSI Conversion Matters Jeffrey Green 2365 Queen St. E., Suite 404 Toronto, Ontario M4E 1H2 (416) 628-8411 jeff@wsiconversionmatters.com