Its all very well having all this data on your customer journey, but how do you use it to your benefit without getting bogged down. I have put together some top tips on how to use your analytics to improve your website in laymen’s terms (I am Scottish its the only way I know how)!

Page views

No matter what kind of site you have, you will most likely benefit from visitors viewing a higher number of pages on your site. With every statistic you aim to improve, get an average number and investigate further before attempting to increase. Think about what you can do to your site to increase the number of page views.  Do your research and check out your competitors (nick their idea’s) and be willing to change things. Are you cross-promoting similar products people might be interested in?  Are you providing useful content to go along with products, as we all know content is king!

Referring Links

Take a close look at your inbound links, what sites are referring traffic to you through normal links. Why are they doing so? Is it possible to improve those relationships to get even more traffic from them? Are there more sites like these that could be approached and perhaps linked with via a reciprocal relationship?  Are there any types of sites you think you should be getting links from but aren’t? Why not? If not, maybe you should focus on your content and create some good quality content to go with your products. If so, are there more links you could get from external sites who like / need your content. You have to have something they want i.e (content, tools) that would add value to their site and their customers.

Geographic Reach

Examine your geographic location statistics and see what areas of the UK or world you receive the majority of your traffic from and the areas you are weak in. What can you do to improve traffic in places you’re weak and what can you do to strengthen your traffic in areas where you’re strong? Are you marketing yourself to your weak regions?  Should you invest in Pay Per Click or optimise your site for searches in your weak areas? Contact me if you want to know more about PPC marketing.

Organic Search Terms

Just like referring links, what can you learn from organic search terms? Can you get more traffic and better rankings for the terms that are doing well? Are there terms you’re not ranking well for? Can you create more  content for those? Should you consider reviewing your current strategy and contacting a digital agency.  It is likely you will need to review your SEO strategy and adjusting your link building strategy accordingly.

Constantly update your content

Examine your most commonly visited content and analyze why. Is it because it has the most links to it? Because the way the website is structured? Or is it because it’s the most useful or relevant content to visitors? Once you know why, expand that content and add further depth.  Your most popular content may be a certain product or category. Is it possible to add more products of that type or category? Are your most desirable products being found and is it possible to create feature rich content that Google will love. Is the top content really the products you want to have the most traffic?

Monitor Your Bounce Rate

Generally your top [hot] content generates traffic from natural search listings and becomes an entry point to your site. This because either organic search terms or links send visitors to your top content first. Google analytics and most analytics tools have a Bounce or Exit rate. This is vitally important as the percentage indicates the visitors that have exited on the same page they arrived on, not finding what they were looking for.  A low percentage indicates they clicked on other parts of your site before leaving, and a large percentage is very bad as it means they have just viewed the page and left.  Obviously the lower percentage the better as ideally you want them to find the information they were looking for and move on to look at other pages and ultimately convert the sale. (happy days).  Investigate the path you want your visitor to take from the landing page to reach the information you would like to supply them with.  Is your sales process working correctly?  Are you giving the visitor all the information they require in order to make an informed decision and complete the cycle and purchase?

Monitor Website Parameters

Google Analytics and most analytics packages allow you to see things like what operating system your customer is using, what resolution their screen is set at, if they have Flash installed, what browsers they are using and host of other data which can be used.  There’s nothing worse than finding out 50 percent of your audience are Apple users and you’ve never seen how awful and un-rendered your site looks on an Apple Mac.  Check this regularly to make sure your site is designed to look and operate well as much of your audience as possible. You should rigorously perform cross-browser testing to make sure your not providing a bad user experience – once a customer has had a bad experience you’ve lost them for good.

Goals

Always establish your goals in advance as you can always change them once you’re up and running.  Google Analytics and most other analytics apps allow you to setup conversion goals of different types.  This isn’t always a sale; on a non ecommerce platform it could be a set goal of having someone request further information or subscribe for a news letter, view a certain amount of pages, or view a particular page or just pick up the phone and contact you. Once you have set up these goals, you can then track them and monitor how well you are performing. There are loads of analytics and analysis that can go into this which I will be discussing at a later date.  But basically track your conversion rate (visitors divided by sales) new avenues for relevant traffic, and improve your statistics from your average stats.

Page Rank And Alexa Traffic Rank

These are important gauges of how well your website is performing and often over-looked.  Google Page Rank is on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest only available to the likes of the BBC. This is scored by Google indicating the web pages relevance and also value. Alexa Traffic Rank is based on 3 months combined traffic computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. A tool I found useful for checking other sites particular competitors is yowzaa and also a cool tool bar which will allow you to monitor every website you visit is toolbar.

Round Up

Start spending a bit of time looking at your analytics, because like me once you start it is like being on eBay, it’s addictive…..  Allowing you to work out exactly how many visitors you need to reach your revenue goals and changing content constantly watching the money roll in.

Its great having this data as it will allow you to improve your website and gain a better understanding of your customer journey which is invaluable. I hope this helps and should you need any clarification please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Calm Asylum Communications presents a one-off seminar that will give you valuable tips and insight into ways in which you can steer your business calmly through the current financial storm, without any big-spending.

We will give you solid advice that you can really use, and let you in on marketing, business and sales secrets that you can implement yourself so that you can see 2009 through with a stronger profile than ever before.

You will walk away with a raft of ideas that translate into real value for your business. And you could also walk away with some fantastic prizes:

A free Financial health check from Harland and Co.
Valued at £500.00
Calm Media Centre: web syndication for your news etc
Valued at £2,500.00
A New You – Book by Author Nicola Cook
Valued at £10.00 (but the content is Invaluable)!

Calm will be delivering this event in partnership with Harland and Co. Financial Planning and engaging speaker, Nicola Cook of Aurora Training.

Presenters:
Simon Brown – MD, Calm Asylum
Bianca Robinson – Calm Asylum
Philip Murray – Harlands
Nicola Cook – Aurora Training/ Nicola Cook.

There are only 30 places available for this one-off event. Book now and reserve your place visit keepcalm.calmasylum.com or phone  0845 058 0511 .

1. Calm Asylum is a creative agency with a digital backbone. Calm offers digital innovation, customer experience, design, marketing, strategy and customer insight.

2. Originally formed in December 1999 by Simon Brown, MD, the company rebranded to Calm Asylum in December 2003.

3. Calm Asylum is an adaptable company which should stand them in good stead in the current climate. Simon has recently made several changes to roles and work practices within the company to make it more effective and has developed online digital tools to help set it apart from competitors.

4. Calm has 11 employees and has recently welcomed Bianca Robinson, Creative Manager; Andrew McCarron, Digital Project Manager and Steph Every, Reception and Admin to strengthen the team.

5. Calm believes that Service Network is a great way to get closer to companies that have previously been competitors and explore working collaboratively for mutual business benefits. This is crucial if businesses like ours are to stand a chance in the global economy.

6. Calm knows the importance of relationship working closer clients and has a fantastic client list including Northgate Plc, Darlington College, Middlesbrough College, Business and Enterprise North East (Business Link), Newcastle University and Wolf Systems.

7. Calm Asylum was runner up in the NE Business Awards, Business and the Community category. This recognised its offer to charities that need effective brands and communications without an unrealistic investment.

8. MD, Simon Brown is on the board for charity The Main Project which supports families of and children with Autism. The company also works with Teesside Hospice.

9. To beat the housing slump, Simon and his wife Vicki are raffling their 6 bedroom, £650,000 home in Ingleby Barwick – tickets are £25 each see www.winfellowshall.com

10.  The name Calm Asylum is sometimes mistakenly called an oxymoron. In reality it refers to a safe haven and a space to think differently.

Well, it is our firm belief that companies need to be real and touchable. They need to converse with their potential customers, otherwise those customers will just go ahead and initiate conversations without them! (Think Dell Hell). So that’s what the team here at Calm have set out to do.

We talk about what we know -  we have some fascinating people in here who can talk passionately about every aspect of marketing – starting from brand and filtering through to the kaleidoscope of ways in which brands realise themselves – design, media, message, digital, social etc. We also post things on our blog that we think represent the way we think and show you videos, pictures and link to other blogs that say it better.

Also, we want to be found! We want more business than we can [currently] handle. And the Calm Asylum will grow to fit! A blog that talks about the things we do best has got to be one of the best ways we can think of to get into Google’s top ranks without even trying! See David Meerman Scott’s blog for more on this.

We really want you to see a bit of our personality in this blog. So you’ll also find stuff about things that tickle us pink from time to time. We also want you to participate, comment and get in touch. Think of our blog as a little peek into the minds of the inmates at the Calm Asylum – welcome to our space (and grab a free poster while you’re there)!

An interesting viral ad for Wonderbra.  (Calm down boys)!

Introducing the Calm Asylum online interactive Advent Calendar 2008!

Forget sending Christmas cards this year, they’re not good for the environment and they are BORING!
 
Send your clients to a fun online Advent Calendar instead, and let them play a game a day throughout December. Take advantage of our early booking offer and save £200 by ordering your interactive Advent Calendar today. (Early booking offer ends August 15th)

Click here to try one of our all time favourite games and see just how easy it is to put a smile on your clients faces.

We’ll personalise it for you to include your company logo, you’ll get a graphic to add to your own website, and a branded email to send to your clients too.

We’ll also keep track of how many of your clients and their friends visit your own website from the Advent Calendar. Last year one company received over 200,000 hits to their website!

Posted by Calm People

A brief is the most important piece of information issued by a client to an agency. It’s from the brief that everything else flows. Therefore it’s essential that every effort be taken to prepare the best possible documentation of what is required.

It’s in the nature of creative thinkers that giving them the tightest of parameters will often stimulate the most inventive of responses – and 79% of clients and agencies agreed that: “It is difficult to produce good creative work without a good brief”. Im sure the Calm creative team wholeheartedly agree!

The client brief can be considered the platform for a communications campaign. The better a company’s corporate or brand position is defined and the more thoughtfully its key business issues are described, the more likely it is that strategic and creative thinkers in agencies will be able to apply their specialist skills to produce great solutions.

“The whole idea is to stimulate the creative imagination, not to restrict it. Ultimately you are buying creative ideas. Procurement people can sometimes write briefs as though they were buying copper piping or paperclips. But selling is an art. It’s more like briefing an architect. We need agencies to feel inspired so they can do their best work.”

© IP for this article is fully reserved by ISBAthe IPA, MCCA and PRCA, who have co-authored and produced the above.

“The Local Government Association (LGA), an association of English and Welsh local authorities representing over 50 million people, has told local government officials to ditch meaningless jargon. According to an article in The Telegraph , the LGA has sent a list to Town Halls of 100 words and phrases that should be avoided. The list includes “empowerment,” “synergies,” “revenue stream,” “sustainable communities,” and “stakeholders”.”

Pehaps this means they will stop “next generation communications with flexible, robust terminologies, around  world-class, scalable, cutting-edge, mission-critical, market-leading, industry-standard, turnkey, and groundbreaking offering” to their stakeholders and service-users?

The guy in question mentioned that he hadn’t physically visited some websites in over 18 months as he accesses the content he wants when he wants it through his RSS reader. It made me ask myself the question “is there a fundamental shift in the way people are accessing web content”…I guess I already know the answer to this just by looking at my own reading habits. It did however reinforce to me just how important really content is.

In my experience, from talking about websites in both a personal and a business context, many of the conversations (certainly with clients) are weighted towards the ‘look and feel’ – colours, navigation, and image style etc…basically the form, not the function. If the answer to my question is what I think it is, such a focus on form is becoming a dangerous game to play. Of course a website must be presented in a way that is relevant for its audience but looking good just isn’t enough anymore.

Don’t get me wrong I love using the web, experiencing all the good, bad and sometimes very indifferent ways some site authors present their information and allow users to interact with their websites. However, due to an increasing number of sites and decreasing available time, website owners should be aware that I, and many others, have been drawn in recent months to begin picking and choosing the sites that I actually physically visit.

In the same vein, this also applies to the barrage of content from email newsletters that I get sent each day promoting all manner of things, some of which I have chosen to receive, some of which I haven’t (I don’t have the money to invest in a Nigerian Mine, and I already have a watch so don’t need a new Ralex or Rolax). When I subscribe or sign up to something I am happy, and expect to, receive content from that source, but not from a raft of other content sources targeting me with ‘once in a lifetime opportunities’ or ‘extra special offers’…the stuff I didn’t sign up for!

So, although the conversation at the event initially seemed strange I asked myself how long it would be before I am just like ‘that guy’ accessing ALL my favourite content through selected, targeted, and incorruptible RSS feeds.  They provide me not only with text content, but now with accompanying links to other rich media such as related images and multimedia content. Just what I need….the content I want, when I want it.

The answer for me is not soon enough. Although, there are some sites that I like to visit that have not embraced RSS to allow its regular users to be updated when fresh content is available…come on guys catch up because chances are your users will be way ahead of you!…

Unfortunately the agency is not known otherwise I’d have linked to it…

Hilarious - The Calm Asylum’s favourite man on the net…

Known as The Poetic Prophet AKA the SEO Rapper AKA M0Serious, he’s created raps covering conversion closing, search, links, design code and more.

Fab NZ agency APROPOS has created these genius wee characters in a cool animation called NetBasics, warning about the dangers of the big wide web. Really digestible way to get the message to kids, big kids, over-grown kids etc.. the APROPOS site is a pretty genius use of flash as a platform. If you look carefully you will also see a pair of JANDALS.

This is unbelievable – a viral campaign that changed the hygeine habits and behavours of literally millions of people in India – beyond all expectations….

(maybe we should try something like this to change the hygeine habits the boys here at Calm)…