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Note: This article was originally published in The Greeley Tribune, Sunday Business Section, June 22, 2005 Web Wise: Is your Web site generating leads?By Lori Gama-WhiteDaGama Web Studio, Inc. A Business-2-Business marketing consultant, Ruth P. Stevens, recently gave the keynote speech at the Rocky Mountain Direct Marketing Association's conference in Colorado. She validated what I've been preaching for many years when she stated that "the top two best prospecting media are: Your Web site and Search Engine Marketing" -if you are prospecting for leads. Prospecting for leads is what most Web site owners are attempting to do with their Web sites and often end up feeling frustrated when no one contacts them or buys anything. Their Web site fails to do its job of selling products or generating leads because the Web site was not set up to succeed in the first place. How do you set up your Web site to succeed in its goal of selling products or generating leads? In real life, you can see your customer's body language when you're selling to her or him. You can measure their attention span or lack of it and you can tell if your prospective customer is excited or disinterested. What about on your Web site? How can you tell if your Web site visitors are getting what they came for? How can you tell if your Web site is doing its job? It's a circular process and it begins with web analytics. Wikepedia.org defines "Web analytics" as "the study of online experience." You can't study your Web site visitors without first defining who your typical customers are. Once you have a profile of each type or persona, you can build your Web site to please each persona. Then use web analytics to "see" your customer's "body language." Through web analytics you can determine how long Web site visitors are staying, which pages they're visiting, which pages they're arriving at and leaving without exploring any other pages, what Web sites they're coming from, what keywords they're using and many other statistics. You can also see which search engine is bringing you the most traffic. Armed with this data, you can begin to analyze the pages of your Web site so you can fix things and keep your customers coming back. For instance, one important statistic to analyze is your bounce rate, which is the number of people visiting one page and leaving without exploring any other pages. Review the page itself and determine how you can make it easier for each of your typical customers to find what they need right away. Build your Web site with these components in place and you'll create a strategic business tool: Only after those components are in place, should you implement Search Engine Marketing and E-mail Marketing to bring highly targeted traffic to your site. As the traffic increases (check your stats), keep track of leads generated by your site. Don't forget to track phone calls generated from people calling your phone number found on your Web site. If you're not reaching your goal, start again. Continually measure your marketing and analyze your Web site so you can fix things that aren't working. Your Web site is your most important marketing tool and it's a constant work-in-progress. Be prepared to work with it on a weekly or bi-weekly basis so you can start getting results, whether that's in the form of leads or customers buying your products. Lori Gama-White owns DaGama Web Studio in Greeley, Colorado. Developing strategic, results-oriented Web sites since 1997, Lori Gama-White and her team of Web professionals are passionate about helping people get their businesses on to the Internet. For more information, questions or comments, call 970-378-7822 or e-mail . |