Monthly Archives: November 2011

Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog: The wonders of Google Analytics (Part 1): new Real-Time Visitor Reporting

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Jeremy Nelson SmithThe Wonders of Google Analytics (Part 1): new Real-Time Visitor Reporting

A lot of people say negative things about Google wanting to dominate the online world, dominate the Universe etc., but on the whole I’m not one of them. When you look at what they provide for free to the SME owner or senior manager it really is quite remarkable.

The latest incarnation of Google Analytics is a case in point. Google Analytics has always been a pretty amazing free tool for businesses of all sizes, particularly SME’s for whom enterprise level analytics tools are too over-size in terms of features and too expensive. However, the latest launch of Google Analytics goes way further than before with some really useful and very cool features to help you in your analysis of exactly what’s happening on your web pages.

For example, how would you like to see how many people are visiting your website in real-time ? And see what pages they’re looking at right now? And see what URLs and which countries they are coming from? And what keywords they’re using?

Well, now you can. Here’s how:

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account.

2. Make sure you’re using the new version by, if necessary, clicking ‘New Version’ in the top right navigation bar.

3. Click Home in the orange navigation bar.

4. Click Real-Time (Beta) then Overview in the drop down menu.

5. You can get also more detail by clicking on Locations, Traffic Sources and Content in the drop down menu.

Pretty impressive, I think you’ll agree. And pretty useful, particularly if you’re running AdWords campaigns where a real-time view of what’s happening on your pages is really, really helpful in assessing your campaign effectiveness. Thanks Google.

More on the new version of Google Analytics coming in Part 2.

Wishing you success with your Internet marketing.

Jeremy

P.S. For a copy of my free guide ‘How to Generate More Revenue from your Website – Guaranteed!’, go to www.the-internet-marketing-expert.co.uk

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Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog: Two essential tips for engaging your website visitors and converting them into buyers or new business contacts.

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Two essential tips for engaging your website visitors and converting them into buyers or new business contacts.

Getting quality visitors to your web site is the first step in generating maximum revenue from your website. The second is to engage those visitors and give them a compelling reason for carrying out an action which results in you obtaining their contact details for your new business database.

Here are two ways you can do that:

Tip One: Provide free content that delivers real value.

It’s unlikely that visitors will buy your product or engage your services the first time they visit your website. This applies particularly to service orientated websites; after all, they probably know little about your company and have no relationship with you.

But if someone visits your website and then leaves without giving you their contact details, you’ll have no way of following up, building a relationship with them and turning them from a prospect into a customer.

You need to offer your prospects something valuable in return for their contact details before they leave your site; a valuable, compelling, can’t ignore ‘offer’ that they’ll find hard to resist, for example:

  • A special ‘time-limited’ discount
  • A free consultation (limited to say 30 minutes)
  • A downloadable e-book
  • A free hard-copy ‘How to’ guide
  • A video or DVD

N.B. To be truly irresistible it must address their biggest challenge or problem.

Tip Two: Make your website completely customer-focused.

Too many websites are designed ‘from the inside out’. This means that the website owner has not thought enough about the design, functionality, layout and content from the customer’s perspective.

When a prospect visits your site they are totally focused on themselves, their challenges or problems and how you might provide a solution. This applies whether that visitor is looking for an urgent replacement ink cartridge for their printer or a complete marketing review that is going to accelerate their business growth.

The content of your website should be well-written, easy to understand, well presented and highly relevant to your target audience, and it should answer all the questions likely to be asked by your visitors. Highly relevant content can also increase your Google page rank.

Above all, look at your website from your customers’ perspective. Give them what they want to see, read and listen to, not what you want.

Wishing you every success in your business.

Jeremy

For a copy of my free guide ‘How to Generate More Revenue from your Website – Guaranteed!’, go to www.the-internet-marketing-expert.co.uk

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Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog: How to generate more revenue from your website – guaranteed!

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Jeremy Nelson SmithHow to generate more revenue from your website – guaranteed!

Anyone who’s been in business for a while knows that two of the absolute ‘must-haves’ for success are:

  1. Getting new customer or clients
  2. Keeping them coming back for more

For most SMEs maintaining a steady flow of new clients is really quite difficult. The majority of business owners that I meet usually rely on using a few lead generation tactics because they bring some good results. However, any business that sticks to a just small ‘basket’ of lead generation techniques is in danger of being outstripped by competitors who use a wider range of effective tactics to attract clients.

If you want to accelerate your company profits you need a steady flow of high-quality leads. To achieve that you need to use many different ways to generate leads, both on and offline.

Here are just five key tips on lead generation, without any cold calling (which you probably hate doing as much as I do!).

1. Set your SMART* lead generation objectives so you can determine what works and what doesn’t. Set specific targets that you can track and measure.

Spend time setting your objectives and specific, measurable targets. If you don’t how will you ever know if your lead generation programme has been successful or not?

(*SMART = Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-limited)

2. Use your website as your primary ‘lead conversion machine’.

Your website, if set up and optimised correctly, can be a powerful marketing tool that takes prospects generated by your lead generation programme and converts them into a never-ending stream of high-quality leads for your business.

To work effectively your key landing pages (the ones where visitors enter your website) must capture your visitor’s attention immediately. On every page have a call to action or incentive for visitors to do something that you want them to do, e.g. watch a video, read a blog post, download a PDF, sign up for a newsletter.

3. Use Social media marketing to attract people to your website.

Social media marketing is promoting your website through social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or blogging. It can be a low cost and very effective way of increasing your website traffic.

Create a Facebook page for your business. Facebook can work for businesses as long as doing so fits the preferences and behaviours of your audiences.

Start a blog on your site and post interesting, informative content regularly. You may well be surprised by how many people visit your website to read it, and of course once they’re on your site you have the opportunity of incentivising them to complete an action that moves them closer to becoming a customer or client.

4. Use direct mail to generate leads.

Direct mail like sales letters, post cards, flyers etc., is still one of the most effective ways of communicating your messages to your target audience and of course driving them to your website, where they should be incentivised to complete the kind of actions I’ve mentioned above.

Direct mail’s main advantage over email is that it doesn’t have the message filtering that email marketing has.

5. Use online advertising like Google AdWords to instantly drive quality traffic to your web pages.

Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC) can be a highly effective way of getting the right people to your web site quickly, particularly if you are finding it difficult to obtain page 1 rankings on Google.

N.B. Proceed with caution with PPC! You need to be very specific with your targeting and campaign set up or you may find your self spending more money, more quickly than you had planned! If you have little or no experience with PPC then consult an expert. It’ll save you frustration, time and money in the long run.

For many more tips email me at jns@theinternetspecialist.co.uk for a copy of my free booklet – ‘How to Generate More Revenue from Your Website – Guaranteed!’

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Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog: What are your website visitors clicking on? Use Google In-page Analytics to find out.

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What are your website visitors clicking on? Use Google In-page Analytics to find out.

Knowing which links on your website are being clicked on, and just as importantly which are not, can help you enormously in deciding how best to optimise your web pages for maximum conversion effectiveness. As we all know getting people to your website is one thing, getting them to do what you want them to do when they get there is quite another!

So just how can you see which are the most and least well used links on your website?

Using In-Page Analytics in your Google Analytics account is one free way; it’s not the most sophisticated nor accurate tool available but for the SME owner it’s a quick and easy way of assessing how your web pages are performing when it comes to people moving from one part of your site to another.

Here’s how to access In-Page Analytics (if you’re used to accessing your Google Analytics reports then skip steps 1 – 4):

  1. Log in to your Google Account
  2. From your account settings choose Analytics
  3. Click on your account name
  4. In the Website Profiles list click on View report
  5. From the top left hand menu (headed by Dashboard) click on Content
  6. From the sub-menu select In-Page Analytics

As if by magic you’ll see your website appear (probably the Home page) in the panel to the right. The Content Detail for that page (pageviews, bounce rate etc) will appear to the left.

In the right hand panel you can see the percentage of clicks for each link.

The orange bar at the bottom shows you the percentage of clicks below what you are looking at, great for checking if links ‘below the fold’ (i.e. not visible to most people using standard monitor or laptop screens without scrolling) are being missed (Tip: never put your most important ‘hero’ content or messages below the fold where people can miss it).

You can use the scroll bar to the right to move up and down the page.

You can navigate from one page to another within the In-Page Analytics window and each time you move to another page the corresponding data will appear. Clever stuff isn’t it!

To get out of In-Page Analytics and back to the main report data click on Back to Content Overview at top left of the page, under the Google Analytics window.

I strongly recommend that you give Google In-Page Analytics a try. All the clients I’ve shown it to have been fascinated by the data and some key decisions about how to improve content layout and navigation have been made because of it.

Just remember to take the data as a snapshot of what’s happening click-wise on your web pages. Its a valuable snapshot but not doesn’t provide the level of data that you’ll get with paid-for tools like Clicktale or CrazyEgg.

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

Internet Marketing Consultant London Blog