Digital Marketing Consultant

The death of CoTweet should not have come as a surprise to anyone. The Twitter tool, whose users had included social media paragons JetBlue, was sold in 2010 to ExactTarget, an email marketing firm with revenues of over $100 million. After beginning as a free beta, it was one of the first Twitter tools to appeal to enterprise clients, charging a fee of $1,500 per month for access to functions that included multiple account management, click tracking and monitoring mentions.

ExactTarget will discontinue CoTweet on February 15th, replacing it with SocialEngage, a subscription-only service with a currently opaque pricing structure.

CoTweet’s death gives three warnings to people using social media tools for professional purposes.

First, you are going to have to pay. Although there is no shortage of other companies happy to pick up CoTweet’s disappointed users (Mashable offered a list of seven of them but plenty more popped up in the comments to let reader knows that they are around too), if those services cannot make money, then they are going to die as well. 

Second, you are going to have to pay because other companies are willing to pay. ExactTarget is doing away with its free tool because it knows that firms see a value in the sort of functions that their tool provides. JetBlue is certainly big enough to pay $1,500 per month for its dozen-strong “Real Time Recovery Team,” the name it gives to its social media department, to have access to click-tracking, fast monitoring and scheduled tweets.

And third, you are going to have to use tools, even if companies are charging for them.

For now, Twitter only delivers the most basic of statistics and the barest of services. The company has always worked that way, preferring to let the community develop the tools for which it saw a need. That situation will not remain forever though. Some services, such as URL shorteners, have already been embedded into Twitter, killing demand for third party add-ons. Other developers, like Tweetie, TweetDeck and Summize to name just three, have already been bought, leaving rivals to pick over the remains. Twitter is now rolling out new business profiles which will give companies an opportunity to push themselves harder on the site. 

But while analytics that track replies, retweets, and clicks, and which even return some demographic information about followers are currently only available to advertisers, there is a good chance that Twitter will also provide access to numbers for all users. There is likely to be a fee for some details, especially the kinds of figures that will help any social media marketer to tweak their strategies most effectively. But the ability to really target your messages and reach readers will make that fee worthwhile.

At the moment, it is just too easy to think of social media as a free ride. It is free to join and free to use. You can upload all the images you want and send as many messages as you want for nothing. But as the demise of free CoTweet shows, you cannot expect to get something for nothing forever, and if that something brings value to a business, you should be getting ready to pay for the value.

 

Web data is used for both reporting purposes and site analysis.  It should be noted that site analysis and reporting are two different animals.  Reports are easy; Analysis is not.

A clear definition of both reporting and site analysis is required to assure both functions are in proper operation for the website. 

Analysis is generally performed to assure their business or organization is given value.  Added value to your business will take you to new levels of success.  Both analysis and reporting influence the call-to-action.  This in return brings value to your business. 

Unless changes are implemented, the data received by analysis and reporting will be of no use to your business.  

Reporting

Reporting organizes data in summary form to present the health of the business. 

Analysis

The process of reviewing both reports and data in an effort to extrapolate meaningful understanding to be used to improve the performance of your business.

Reporting uses raw data element to compile informative summaries regarding a business or website.  Analysis uses these reports to make recommendations for business improvement.  

Analysis is performed to obtain answers to problems and challenges.

Identification of the differences between reporting and analysis is required to gain credibility with recommendations.   There are several different tasks involved in analytics including examination, interpretation, comparison, confirming, and questioning.  

A broad-brush look of analysis and reporting identifies a lot of similarities in the way of charts, trends, statistics, and graphs.  But outside of these areas, there are some distinctive differences in the approach.   Analysis uses an extraction method and reporting uses a pushing method.  

Reporting

Three types of reporting include:
1.    Canned Reports
These are defined static reports. 
2.    Custom Reports
These reports are frequently referred to has dashboard reports.  They provide a broad view of the performance for a business in relation to a specific market.   These reports are generally static.
3.    Alerts
Alerts are reports based upon data falling outside of the expected result.

Analysis

Analysis uses static reports, Ad hoc responses, and analysis presentations. But Analysis is an art and a science.  Analysis is a study of it own.  

The success of search engine optimization is recognized by specific measures for your website.   There is so much more to measure than just the sheer number when it comes to website traffic.  Do you know what takes place with the traffic arriving on your website?  If you have analytics, do you understand the reports?

Traffic that gets to your site but does not stay can actually have a negative impact on the search engine rankings for your site.  This is in addition to a frustrated visitor not finding what they had expected to find.

Some of the things you need to be measuring for the effectiveness of your search engine optimization include:
•    Bounce rate
•    Time on site
•    Page views
•    Goal completion
•    Conversions

The above measures should be performed at the keyword level.  Doing this will provide the information you need to know, the value of specific keywords, and identify opportunities for improvement for other keywords.   Measuring use throgh surveys with customer input and on social media can help you make informed decisions regarding your content and optimization strategies.

Analytics provide an array of information and graphs, making it easy to get lost in the data and graphics without gaining much insight or direction from them.   Knowing what you need to look for will keep you focused on getting the information you need to make strategic decisions for your business and your strategic marketing plan.

Understanding analytics takes time to get your arms around, but the end result of increased business, satisfied customers, and improved search engine ratings will be well work the time you have taken.

There are tools and Digital Marketing Consultancies with experts available to help you with the analytics of your website.  Using these services can save you time and allow you to experience much quicker business success.  To get an idea of what you need to know, see our Wisdom Book.  The book is long and, if  you don't have time to look through the whole thing, just start from the back.

Window shopping is made easy on the internet.  Shoppers can do it right from the comfort of their home and they do every day.  Your website should convert window shoppers to buyers.

Window shoppers perhaps are not buying because they aren’t ready to buy right now, they may not be target market, or perhaps they can’t find what they are searching for in your online site.

Here are some action steps you can take to increase your online sales.

Target Market

To generate more sales you need to attract more of your target market to your website.   You want to attract the visitors who are looking for your specific products. In order to attract a defined target market, your marketing plan must be very targeted to that particular market. 

Your targeted market must be able to find exactly what they are looking for on your website.  Not every customer will be looking for the same thing and you must make sure each visitor can find the exact thing they are in search of.

Conversion Architecture

Make sure your website makes it easy for your visitors to make a purchase or to request your newsletter.  If this process is difficult in any way, the potential buyer will leave without making a purchase.  Your visitor should NEVER have to think about how to navigate your site...not for a split second.  And it should be simple and  intuitive to take the action of downloading, asking, or buying.

Analytics

Understand your visitors.  There are different types of visitors that will visit your website.  Understanding your visitors will help you to sell to visitors other than just your target market.  If you don't know who is visiting your site and who is taking action on your site, the rest of your site is a wasted effort.

Some visitors get to your site by mere chance, but if the appearance of your site can get their attention in a postive manner, they may just stick around for a while.  If your site is intuitive, the visitor will not be distracted by having to think what to do next.  Making it easy to take action by complete clarity will give your site the opportunity to possibly convert what otherwise might have just been a window shopper. 

If you would like to understand more, visit our Wisdom Book.

 

Your website has been designed to attract the attention of your target market.  You have developed the very best Internet and Digital Marketing campaign and, based upon the orders received for products and signups for your email newsletter, all seems to be going well.  But how well is well and is there anything else after SEO (search engine optimization)?

Yes, the next step is to analyze the traffic to your website.  Traffic analysis is a necessary part of your Internet business, just as SEO is a necessary part.   

You will need to review your server logs.  These logs provide some raw data, but your hosting company probably provides a program to assist with interpretation of the information.  

The data will provide you with number of hits and number of visitors.  Both of these numbers are important numbers to track when evaluating your website.   The data should also provide you with who is sending visitors to your site.

Before we go any further let define the terms visitor and hit.
•    Visitor:  Represents a click to your site from somewhere on the Internet.  The data on the server logs will record a visitor once no matter how many pages they review.  One visitor can look at a lot of products or information, but is still considered one visitor.
•    Hits:  A click on a page of the site is a hit.  One visitor can have multiple hits. Your server logs will show the total number of hits or clicks that are made for site pages. 

Is one of these, hits or visitors more important than the other?

Actually both are statistics that should be monitored and analyzed for your website.    The number of visitors provides you with the number of potential customers visiting your site.  The number of pages viewed by all visitors, referred to as hits can be used with the number of visitors to obtain the hits to visitors ratio.

The depth of the site is determined by dividing the total number of hits within a given period of time by the total number of visitors for the same period of time.  This will let you know how many pages on average people are viewing on your site per visit.  

Site stats analysis is necessary for you to determine if changes are needed to the site and if you need to tweak your marketing campaign.

But, now I must tell you that, once you have Visitors and Hits down pat, you need to get past these stats which really tell you little.  You need to start using a real analytics tool, like Google Analytics or Click Tracks.  And then comes the process of interpretation.

Sound complicated?  Yes, but if you don't understand the why, who, what, where, and when about your visitors, you have wasted all the other efforts and money that you have put into your site and your Internet and Digital Marketing campaign.

If you have to start someplace, start with our free webinar and free whitepaper download.  When you want to get serious, begin reading our wisdom book.

What is the ratio of hits-to-visitor on your web site?  It is important to both know the answer and to understand what it means to your business web site.

There are lots of different ways to analyze data about visitors to your website, but it is a known fact that the ratio of hits-to-visitor is important to your website profitability.

Looking at the number of hits per visitor on your website for a specified period of time is valuable.   The formula to obtain this ratio is relatively simple, number of hits within a given period of time divided by the total visitors for the same period of time.   You can use whatever period of time you would like such as:
•    Day
•    Week
•    Month
•    Quarter
•    Year

Looking at a period of time less than one day will result in an inaccurate view of traffic to your site.

This ratio shows you the number of pages a visitor on average looks at while on your site.   A low number is not good.  You want this number to be higher.  The more pages a visitor looks at the more likely they will make a purchase, sign up for your newsletter, or take action in other good ways.

There are some basic reasons the ratio is sometimes low and there are some ways to improve things and improve the length of time a visitor stays on your site and looks at several pages.

What are some of the most common causes for a low ratio of hits to visitor?
•    Slow loading time
•    Artificial clicks on PPC
•    Nonspecific advertising

The most common cause is slow loading time for each page on your website.  Your visitors will not wait around for a slow loading page.  It is important to remember a lot of internet users are still relying on dial up methods of accessing the web which will only result in longer load times.  You should have your pages designed to minimize load time.

I will give you a good example of a bad example on my own website: The Wisdom Book.  Because of the heavy graphics of this book, the whole site loads more slowly than I would like and especially this section.  I keep it there because the information is quite beneficial for serious visitors.  If I depended on the site for selling a product, I would move the book to another site just for the book.

Pay-Per-Click campaigns should be monitored for click fraud.  This will distort your number of hits and not reflect an accurate ratio of hits to visitor.

Your keywords need to be specific to your site and products offered.  Using keywords that are too general will send visitors to your site and, when they see your site does not offer what they thought they would be getting, they leave rather quickly.  Your advertising campaigns and keywords should accurately describe your web site and products or services.

As long as we are talking about basic information for website, you really need to read Google Webmaster Guidelines for websites: Google Guidelines.