by Leslie Lyon (http://www.spas2b.com/)
The future of most businesses has become information analysis.
And being that a strong online presence is taking first position in today's business marketing strategies, you must analyze your website aggressively to understand its contribution to current and future profit generation.
Maximum online profit generation can only occur if you take an analytical approach
There are a number full website traffic statistics and analytics
systems available, but are you using any of them? And aside from Web
Analytics, there are also comparison resources and performance metrics
that should be considered.
Do you know what paths visitors are using
to gain access to your website? What is the ratio of new vs. returning
visitors? Which keywords are drawing visitors to your sites? Which
Search Engines? What is your bounce rate? Where are most of your
inquiries coming from? Is your Home Page customer-focused? How do you
compare to your competition?
What exactly will keep your business mojo running?
Take a look at our Top 5 Web Analytics Resources. Some offer better information than others for user behavior and some are stronger when it comes to facts and figures. With your research and once you have done your own needs analysis, it should become clear to you, which will suit your situation the best. Enjoy!
1. Google Analytics - Provides full website analysis.
It is currently a free service, but it requires that you have an
account with Google and that you meet specific online criteria. Once
your account has been set up, Google begins to gather data on your
site(s), and reports it back to you via pages and pages of graphs, maps
and stats. Everything from the number of visitors to your site; to new
visits vs. repeat visits ratios; average time on site; top traffic
sources; top pages; keywords; and so much more, this program is a
must.
My two favorites have to be the map and site overlays. The map
overlay tells you exactly how many visitors are coming from each area
in the world; and the site overlay pops up percentages onto each link
on your web pages, to show where visitors are clicking. This is
definitely worth the investment in time that it takes to get set up.
2. Google Trends - Compares key words and phrases.
We all know the importance of key words and key word phrases. Here you can input two or more key words or phrases to evaluate and compare their effectiveness against each other, with the results displayed on a graph. You can drill down further to uncover results on specific target locations, and more. This is a very useful tool to help you choose the appropriate word content within your web pages, to ultimately boost your exposure and organic ranking.
3. Compete - Identifies competitive strategies.
Compete is an online competitive service that combines intelligent site and search analytics to help you improve your online marketing initiatives by identifying competitive strategies. Knowing this information can take your SEM (search engine marketing) and SEO (search engine optimization) efforts to the next level, and help you stay on top with site metrics and audience profiles.
4. WeWe Score - Rates your website's customer focus.
When visitors find your website, they really only care about how well you can help them meet their needs. Your focus has to be on the customer, which is conveyed through the words you use on your site. This website counts certain words on your site that are the key indicators of whether your focus is on them, or on you. This can be helpful in better understanding the impression you are making on your prospects, and where you need to make changes in order to grab and entice customers to go deeper, when they land on your home page.
5. Trace My IP - Tracks IP addresses for traffic analysis, and much more.
Although we use all of the above sites at Spas2b, I've just found this one, and frankly, it looks very intriguing. Is the time coming that we will actually be able to zero in on the name of the person visiting our websites, and where exactly they are from? It appears that this kind of advanced data gathering is just around the corner, but for now, just knowing more about our visitor details through the activity reports provided here, is a great way to develop strategies; monitor results and improve outcomes.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Leslie Lyon is Founder of Spas2b - a full service Spa Consulting & Spa Management education, specializing in classroom & on-line distance learning courses. For more information, visit http://www.spas2b.com/.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comment Below: What did you love, learn or disagree with in this article. Thanks for your feedback!
I found this blog very informative and I'd like to take a look at some of these websites, but I can't find some of them. It would have been helpful to include their URLs in the blog. Can you please send me the links to "Compete", "Wewe Score", and "Trace My IP"? I would appreciate it.
Thank you.
Posted by: Carrie Houser | 10/14/2009 at 12:25 PM
Carrie:
Good feedback. I did a little research and found that Compete is www.compete.com, Wewe is http://www.futurenowinc.com/ and Trace My Ip is www.tracemyip.com. Hope this helps,
Grant
Posted by: Grant D. Robinson | 10/15/2009 at 10:56 AM