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SMEs Foolish to Ignore Web Data

By UKFast in Featured

SMEs are risking their online success by not analysing website data and optimising their sites accordingly. This is the warning issued by a panel of e-commerce experts at a recent round table held by hosting specialist UKFast.

Liam Ahern, Online Business Specialist at online marketing firm I-COM, told the panel that the key to e-commerce is the ‘trackability’ of the data. He said: “There is a lot of data and part of optimising a site is gathering all of it and analysing it. We need to know why customers buy a product before we can make decisions on how to improve a website.”

Nick Rhind, managing director of web development company CTI Digital, said: “Making a change to a website can make or lose millions. Companies need to prepare changes properly and ask what it is that they want to achieve, how they can do it and how easily they can revert back to the old style if it does not succeed.

“Clients have asked us to build their site around a particular page but when we have looked at it, it is the worst converting page on the site. Businesses need to analyse their figures properly because tools such as Google Analytics may only tell half a story; the page may get a lot of views, so the business thinks that it is doing well, but in reality visitors to the page are dropping off within five seconds and it is one of the worst pages. We need to look at the information as a whole to understand the site.”

Analysing information for every visit to your websites is a time consuming job and not all businesses have the capabilities needed to make the most of the data, especially smaller retailers.

David Grimes, director at MyParcelDelivery.com explained that time is not the only factor, having, or hiring, the right expertise is a worthy investment. He said: “From an SME point of view we have just engaged with a company to help with our SEO because we wanted that expert view on analytics. If I was to look at the data of a site, all I would see is a whole lot of statistics. I wouldn’t be able to drill down into it and that’s where we need that expert’s opinion to give us a really good insight into how our site is doing.”

Jonathan Bowers, communications director at UKFast spoke about the e-commerce businesses on their network. He said: “From what we can see the e-commerce websites that grow quickly are those that are obsessive about offering a great user experience and the majority of them found this out by directly gaining feedback and scrutinising the web data.”

Ahern explained that analytics tools should not only be used to monitor pages that need improving but also to see why and how customers are choosing to buy products.

He said: “Businesses still haven’t mastered what is called conversion attribution. What is it that makes a customer buy a product, where did they first see the product, what drove them to the site? Was it a TV advert or a magazine advertisement? Where did the customer go before visiting our site?

“If ultimately they click through a PPC advert to buy the product, even if they have visited the site several times before and been through a whole other journey, tools such as Google Analytics will only show that the sale came from a PPC ad.

“Proper in-depth analysis can give us a full picture of our site, but businesses are still yet to master this.”

Top E-Commerce Tips for SMEs:
* Don’t deviate from the norm in terms of functionality – consumers know how they like to shop online and expect to follow the same journey
* Focus on a simple and clean platform that gives users a quick and problem-free shopping experience with the option for an enriched experience if the user requests
* Invest in expert analysis of data
* Establish your delivery offer early on – it could dictate the design of an e-commerce platform
* Think about how to give users the ‘touch and feel’ experience online – through augmented reality and detailed descriptions.

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UKFast is one of Europe’s fastest-growing technical companies (as ranked by Deloitte) and has been at the heart of the UK internet industry for more than 10 years. In addition to being named as one of The Sunday Times best companies to work for, it won the UK IT Awards Employer of the Year in 2010.

Previous accolades include the industry’s Best Customer Service Award in 2009 and being named the ISPA UK’s Best Hosting Provider four years consecutively. UKFast has over 400,000 web domains on its network and over 4,000 clients across all industries. Clients include Virgin, Microsoft and UKTV. UKFast is a member of the Cloud Industry Forum.

What Are Web Analytics?

By Tamara Jacobs in Featured

The internet is globalization’s answer to communication. We write personal letters online, do business, sell products, share information, photos, videos, and thoughts. Social influence tools are built in to websites, so that when people shop online it’s as if their friends are right there with them- revealing whether or not they “like” something.

But where should a company begin, after it decides to build an online presence? And which digital marketing tools will generate results?

Thankfully, the age of the internet has brought forth a variety of analytics tools which have made digital marketers efforts completely measurable. Google Analytics can track how many people are searching a keyword, how many of those people clicked on your PPC ad, how long they spent on your site, how many web pages they viewed, and how they got there in the first place.

If web analytics tools make online marketing transparent than why isn’t everyone using them?

Possibility #1: The company has the right technology, but not the staff.

Web analytics software is still not ‘smart’. It just gathers data. But the data won’t amount to anything without an intelligent human there to apply it. There is an overwhelming amount of data web analytics are capable of assembling, and it takes a trained analyst to sift through it all and make decisions about what the client actually needs to know. Furthermore, a good marketer will make short and long-term suggestions based on their analysis and additional market research.

Possibility #2: The company puts too much stock into other digital marketing techniques.

Online marketing doesn’t start and end with PPC and SEO. Decisions about how to manage these (and other) accounts should be based on what web analytics tell you. Digital marketing, like anything else requires a strategy, and strategy needs to be based on facts. If SEO article writing isn’t improving search ranking, than perhaps your approach is wrong, or your online distributor isn’t a good one. If a new PPC ad isn’t generating the number of hits the old one did, then maybe the copy isn’t effective, or competition has increased and so too must your maximum bid.

Most heads of business are interested in one thing- ROI. While the ROI of certain online marketing techniques are difficult to measure- such as social media, others are very straightforward. Why not impress your boss and clients with results that are tangible? Show them that your work has actually generated more sales for them and certainly more brand awareness.

Online marketing has entered a very aggressive stage, which means that a lot of people are starting to play with the available tools in a serious way. They are developing strategies that most companies don’t have the time and resources to manage themselves.

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Adaptive Consultancy is a London based internet marketing firm specializing in website design, eCommerce, and internet marketing, including SEO, PPC and SMO. www.adaptiveconsultancy.com/internet-marketing

Outdated Google Analytics Tracking Code Could be Costing You Thousands

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Do you run an ecommerce site? Do you use Google Analytics code on your pages? Does your site contain secure pages that start with https? If your answer is yes to any of these questions, then you’ll probably shudder in horror when you read this.

Tom Critchlow of Distilled – a search agency in the UK – has written a guest post for the Google Analytics blog that demonstrates how using outdated Google Analytics tracking code on your secure pages can be costing you THOUSANDS of dollars.

Tom explained how he noticed a glitch on the analytics report of his client’s ecommerce site that involved users of Internet Explorer 8. These users had a significantly lower conversion and revenue rate on the site, in comparison to users of other browsers and IE versions.

Turned out Tom’s client was using the old Urchin version of the Google Analytics tracking code on every page. The old code included a call to a non-secure .js file that triggers a security warning pop-up in the Internet Explorer 8 browser.

Browsers like Chrome and Firefox don’t display a security warning but Internet Explorer 8 produces the following warning when users transition from the non-secure (http) pages to secure (https) pages on a web site.

The error looks like this:

Not surprisingly, the error was causing almost all visitors browsing with Internet Explorer 8 to abandon the shopping cart process and this was costing Tom’s client an enormous amount of revenue, estimated to be in excess of USD 150K per month.

A 5 minute fix to the site saved Tom’s client an estimated 1 million dollars per year. What was the fix? Simple. Installing the new version of the Google Analytics tracking code.

The new Analytics tracking code is asynchronous, meaning that it can track a single domain, or more complex sites with multiple subdomains, database driven pages, php pages or just top level domains.

The new tracking snippet offers:

* Faster tracking code load times for your web pages due to improved browser execution
* Enhanced data collection and accuracy
* Elimination of tracking errors from dependencies when the JavaScript hasn’t fully loaded

If you are using older versions of the Analytics tracking code, Google recommends you login to your Analytics dashboard, download the new code and transition your pages over as soon as possible.

Now you have an added incentive to transition – if you run an ecommerce site, the new code might not just save you page load time but thousands of dollars too!

Web Analytics and Your Website – What You Need to Know

By Enzo F. Cesario in Featured

When it comes to the web, information is king. Indeed, the web itself is information, a massive collection of articles, videos, blogs, news stories and photographs trying to convey a message to various audiences scattered around the world. The big sensation over the last year has been Twitter, a system built around condensing information to a mere 140 characters and broadcasting it out to interested users with a minimum of frills and features.

YouTube, a site where literally anybody can upload their videos for the appreciation of others, became the fourth most popular site on the Internet in less than a year. Compare that to newspapers and television, which both have been experiencing decreasing viewership in recent years. People need, want, and will seek out every conceivable sort of information, and the Internet is the place to find it.

Who Wants To Know?

Information isn’t just of use to the casual browser or dedicated auction enthusiast, however. Equally and increasingly interested are the very people posting content to the many pages on the web. Who is visiting which pages? How much traffic is your site getting, and how does it measure up against traffic going to similar sites? What has changed since you put up the big new advertising system last year? Necessity being the mother of invention, this increasing craving for varied and precise forms of information has led to the steady growth of a field called Web Analytics.

What Are You Looking At?

Put simply, Web Analytics is a system of study dedicated to collecting, measuring, and reporting on web and Internet data. This general idea breaks down further into two broad disciplines. The first is on-site analytics, which concerns itself with the journey of each user to a website, and is of primary concern to the owners of that site. It records information ranging from a record of which pages are being visited to a comparison of which pages garner more purchases from visitors. Off-site analytics focuses on information on the Internet as a whole, such as what websites more people are visiting, and what sites are being talked about most frequently. Both methods seek to answer the key question for any website operator – what are people looking at?

But What Does It All Mean?

Proper Web Analytics goes a step further than simple data collection, however. It also concerns itself with interpretation of the data in a context that allows the site owner to take appropriate steps. Let’s use the advertising campaign mentioned earlier as an example. Simple web measurement would be the collection of how many hits and purchases the site gathered before and after the campaign. A serious analytic comparison would explain how quickly purchases picked up after the change, what products and portions of the site drew more traffic as a result, and which pages remained unaffected. In short, web measurement is the gathering of the data; Web Analytics is the comparison and interpretation of that data.

The importance of the analytics field to the modern site owner can be observed in the sheer volume of material available on the subject. Sites offer free programs allowing users to set their own metrics, and others can be purchased, offering extra features and a professional interface. Hardcover and electronic format books have been published dealing with the material, and people have formed associations for the purpose of standardizing Web Analytics methodology and terms.

There is even a Web Analytics conference, the E-metrics summit, held in Santa Barbara, California and London, England each year. Going even further, there are listed job offerings in the field that offer salaries approaching $100,000 a year. Clearly this is not a passing fad, but a serious, vital step for any website interested not just in drawing an audience, but keeping it.

It’s All About Information

Of course this all begs the question – how does a user get started. Moreover, to what degree should they seek to implement Web Analytic tools and techniques? Perhaps a bit counter-intuitively, the quest for information begins with information. Site owners know what they want to accomplish with their sites, be it promoting a specific product or generating an audience for geopolitical discussions in a casual atmosphere. This information is the best place to start because it allows the user to begin understanding what information will help them pursue their goal.

For example, if a page is intended to promote an e-book series, then the user wants to know what information will help them do that promotion. They can then look for analytic tools that will tell them what pages are more successful at selling e-books, and what techniques are less successful.

Taking the time to sit down and think through the purpose that analytic information is ultimately intended to accomplish will make the search easier, and more fruitful from the beginning. With this basic framework established, the next step is the web itself. A simple web search on ‘Web Analytics’ or ‘Web Analytics for beginners’ will return a substantial amount of information. From there users can locate articles, videos, and e-books that will help them make the decisions they need to make their websites successful.

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Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. Go to http://www.Brandsplat.com/ or visit our blog at: http://www.brandsplatblog.com/

How To Use Web Analytics To Grow Your Business

By Mike Tekula in Featured

Got a website? If you own a business, chances are you do.  But don’t pat yourself on the back too quickly. By now it’s widely-accepted that if you have a business card you should probably have a website.  It doesn’t matter what your company is selling – a website, however modest, has become a standard.

The real question is: what is your website doing for your business?

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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