Web Site Marketing The hurdles are taken, the site is built and introduced, an effective Web presence is established. Site awareness is reflected in the numbers of visitors that can be easily measured by a professional user tracking software. So what is going on, when the numbers are right, but Sales is not kicking in? Which steps have to be taken to resolve this issue and market your website professionally? First question is: Marketing your web site properly requires to reach your target group. Are those visitors on your site creating a lot of traffic and therefore only costs, but are not at all part of your target group? You need to answer yourself the following questions: Which one is the most used access page?How does a visitor proceed from there, which pages are then following and which ones are actually viewed? When you realize that most users enter your web site through a page, which ranks high in Search Engines, but is "one of those pages" where the profile of the site is not really brought well to the front, then it is recommended to take a look at the title, keywords and description of this page to find out if it does not evoke wrong expectations. Imagine you have a real store and you see a lot of people coming in, from who you know by experience, that they will never buy. They are either financially not in the position to pay your prices, or they want to get a pair of earrings but you manage a hardware store. It's simple as that. It could be very possible that a wrong image of the web site is predominant and this is reflected in the behavior of the users. Which one of the pages is the most used exit page?This could shed some light into the structure and processes of the web site. Especially when clients are leaving in the middle of the purchasing process, then you know, that it is either confusing or people start to hesitate because unexpected situations develop. This could be caused by: The queue at the cashier is too long - it just takes too much time. This means that the process of the shopping cart is too long and should be simplified. Maybe there are too many questions asked and people feel that they have to reveal too much of their private data. Or worst case scenario: suddenly a bill is presented with additional costs that is coming totally unexpected. When this exit does not take place during the shopping process we have to check another possibility. Let's proceed with the example of a real shop. You have great merchandise to offer, but somehow it is hidden in the back. People walk out of the door, before they have even seen it. Another scenario: They know that you have it in stock, but they simply cannot find it and the hints are too poor to point them into the right direction. This would be to blame on the Information Architecture of the web site. How much time do they spend on each of the pages they visited?Do they just take a glimpse or do they actually show interest in the presented information? To test this and get the facts, measure the time you would need to view the pages and read them from top to bottom. If users stay the average time you actually can be sure that they are browsing your offers, but they also compare them with the prices of the competition. Fact is that, currently, some 48 per cent of "online to offline" shoppers choose a different supplier to the one they used to do their research with online. Keep in mind: customers have an eye for a bargain and the hunt for a special offer is more and more conducted online. Implement your special offers and Sales prominently on the most used "Access and Exit Pages". Conclusion of this research Being able to analyze the user behavior is essential to understand how to push your services and products and improve your web site to generate ROI.Tracking the clicks through the pages of your visitors shows you the weak and strong points of your web site. Enhance the strong points and eliminate the weak points.Collect users feedback on your site in form of a poll or a questionnaire to catch their point of view and to measure their satisfaction.Realize that less visitors generating a healthy balance with sales should be preferred to lots of visitors opposed by a few sales.The quantity of sold items or generated sales leads, viewed in percentage to the number of visitors tells you, how successful your site really is. An additional and positive angle to consider is: People use the Internet as a source to gain information. It is very possible, that when the visitors do not buy online they will visit your "real store", after having found the information on your web site.How-to get these detailed input Which Tracking Software to use? There are numerous to be found on the web. The most revealing one, in our opinion, is http://www.opentracker.net which we finally have chosen to work with. We had tested approximately 15 others before we made this decision. The software delivers us all the detailed information we need, it delivers us all the facts to stay on top of the developments and changes of the web sites we manage for our clients and ourselves. The understanding how users experience their way through a web site, is the key to success. |
