Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Analyzing Your Website Traffic with Google

Lots of companies have websites these days. Your company probably has one. These commercial websites have lots of functions, and they can range from simple information sites about a company to ones more like ours, which are full e-commerce sites that sell products online. No matter what the primary function of the website is, it’s important to know your customers and know how effective your website is.

We’ve been using a very cool product from Google called Google Analytics which provides lots of tools for checking website performance. There’s a lot more to website traffic than counting hits. Google analytics tells us how many of our visitors are first time customers, and how many are returning customers. We can check which days of the week are busiest on our site, and which sections of the site are most effective. Other convenient features check which browsers our customers tend to use and what screen resolutions they’re seeing. If you’re wondering how customers are getting to your website, Google Analytics can see if they’re visiting from search engine results, direct URL, or other sources. You can also compress or stretch the analysis timeframe to see how your website is progressing in the long run.

One of the newer sections of our website sells Milwaukee Tool Parts and we were able to track and analyze the traffic to the page right away. Conversion rates, which show the percentage of visitors that actually place an order online, are important to keep an eye on and we’re able to check how effectively this new section of the website can sell tool parts to customers.

It’s a pretty simple thing, but Google Analytics has provided us with lots of very important information regarding our business online. I would recommend it to any business owner who is serious about their online presence.

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Homepage Hocus Pocus

The website was the single most important thing. All along I knew this, and the resulting procrastination was severe. First impressions count. Because my business was to be solely on line, the biggest influence on visitors would be how I looked on-monitor. Of course, you have to have good copy—nothing substitutes for that. But your home page says so much, not necessarily in words but in style.

Studying my competitors’ websites meticulously, I hated each and every one of them the entire time for having a share of the market that couldn’t yet see me even if they tried. What was surprising about the homepages of the most popular mineral makeup websites—the ones showing up consistently in the left-hand column of Google searches—was the proliferation of bells and whistles: ads, blinking discount offers, seals of approval from official entities of one kind or another, imprints of logo designers, website creators, and hosting companies.

But was it this that made them popular? Instead, I settled on the look of sites in other areas in the Beauty category – the sleeker sites of small companies selling clothing, skin care, and giftware.

I still surf my competitors’ sites, at least weekly, in part to satisfy myself that I made the right decisions, or what I think were the right decisions. Today I continue to get glowing reviews about how beautiful my site is. These are not from friends and relatives, and at some point you just gotta believe. Weigh in, anyone!

Related Topics: Alice Cosmetics    No Comments    

Software as a Service (SAAS)

How does IT in a box sound?

That’s the vision of the latest trend in software development - called Software as a Service (SAAS). For small business owners - this model for technical support is very appealing - if you’re willing to accept the risk.

Software as a Service can be best described as outsourcing an entire business function. Typical SAAS functions are Payroll (Paychex.com), HR (Workday.com), Accounting (Quickbooks.com), Sales (Salesforce.com), and Customer Relationship Management (RightNow.com)

These vendors are part of a growing trend of software providers that allow you to subscribe to the service (typically about $100/month/user - but options vary greatly here). This allows you to run your business with some significant advantage. 1. You don’t have to develop these sorts of applications in-house. 2. You don’t have to have an IT staff to support you. 3. You don’t have to buy a bunch of computer hardware (SAAS vendors have the computers at their site - you just log in via the internet). 4. You don’t have to be an expert in these areas - the SAAS vendors support hundreds of small businesses - and their business model will typically work for you too.

The cost of these applications is typically very reasonable. The drawback is that you give up some of the control that comes with having your own in-house operations. In addition - you have to get over the fact that your Payroll/CRM/Sales/Accounting, information is hosted outside of your business - on your vendor’s website. To counter this concern - I would tell you that the worst thing for a SAAS vendor to have happen is a security breach - and I find that their security infrastructure is better than ANY fortune 500 company I’ve worked with. Security shouldn’t be an issue (although you should question the vendor to make sure you’re comfortable).

One other drawback in having your applications scattered across various vendor websites - is that they aren’t integrated. If you want a Sales order to feed your CRM system - typically you’ll have to re-type the information from Sales into the CRM application. However, web service technology is available to hook all these applications together…and for a bit more investment in some integration services (from great companies like ProCore Resource Group ), you can provide a seamless business process that is automated as well.

In short - if you’re considering some investment in technology to help your business grow - look at SAAS options. It provides state-of-the-market solutions for common business functions at a fraction of the cost it would take if you build it yourself.

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Social Media. Wazzat? Part Two

Some time ago I found a website called Squidoo, a place where anyone can write a mini-webpage on any topic. Mine is entitled “All Things Mineral Makeup” (www.squidoo.com/alicecosmetics), and the hyperlinks in it have sent more clicks to my Alice Cosmetics website than some of the pay-per-click ads I’ve done. Squidoo, it turns out, is a social networking site. Some of its peers are LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and many, many more, each with its own format and concept. These sites typically include member profiles that give potential customers (or friends, or those with similar hobbies, etc.) a peek at who you are, what you like, what you are all about. And blogs are an integral part of this internet-relationship-building.

Social networking, I learned, is a new way to communicate with your target audience, a way of “having a conversation” with those who, increasingly, appreciate knowing you in a more personal way. As I learned in a webinar I attended recently, “the most credible source of information about a company is now ‘a person like me,’ which has risen dramatically to surpass doctors and academic experts for the first time.” This according to the Annual Edelman Trust Barometer, published by Edelman, the leading independent global PR firm.

The bonus? Hyperlinks on blogs and social networking sites also mean precious “backlinks” to your website, one of the things Google loves to see when it ranks your website.

Social network marketing can be a lot of work, but I’m a convert. Try it and let me know what you think.

Related Topics: Alice Cosmetics    No Comments