…Is A Reason To Make a Decision (Part 1)

In my last post I talked about the importance of user information, particularly demographic information. There are other kinds of information out there for web companies to use that are equally important though. If you’re doing business online, you need to use some kind of web traffic tracking tool. In this post, I’ll go over how to use traffic sources to make better business decisions.

Chances are your web hosting company provides statistics about your website. Typically, this information includes your number of page views, where your visitors come from, how long visitors stay at your page and where users are mostly likely to X out of your site. It might just look like percentages and graphs, but you can use it to figure out what your users like and how to change your business for the better.

1. Look at your most popular traffic source, and think about ways that you can make it better.

Don’t just use your analytics to figure out what’s the best. Use it to make the best better. Knowing where your traffic comes will not only give you valuable insight about your current audience, but it may help you figure out how to get new visitors as well. For instance, I recently spoke with a company (Company X) who had a lot of traffic coming through it’s manufacturer’s site. When I looked at this referring site, I noticed that Company X’s link was in a less than ideal location. Surprisingly, half of the links that had been put before Company X either didn’t work or didn’t take users to a page where users could make a purchase. The pages were so irrelevant to the manufacturer’s site that it was probably costing the manufacturer customers. Company X needed to let the manufacturer know that they have what customers are looking for. Company X deserved a much better spot on the referring site. Improving their visibility in their greatest traffic source will lead to:

- A User who can quickly and easily find relevant products

- A sale for the manufacturer made through Company X

- More traffic and sales for Company X

If most of your traffic comes from paid ads like Google AdWords, you may want to allot more budget for paid ads. If you have a lot of direct traffic (people clicking bookmarks or directly entering your URL), then you know your product and/or service and/or website is well suited for repeat traffic. You should nurture this in order to build your customer base. Constantly rebuilding the first floor won’t get you a skyscraper. You have to keep the first floor in order to add a second. Make sure you’re ADDING customers and not just replacing them.

2. Look at your weakest traffic sources, and think about ways you can make them better.

There are many ways visitors can get to a site. Unfortunately, not all of those ways are going to make it easy for your customer to find you. Some companies might notice that their traffic from search engines is extremely low. I’m not going to tell you to spend thousands of dollars to have someone improve your search engine standing (search engine optimization is what they call it). I will say that search engines can drive a whole lot of traffic to your site, and that they’re worth some attention. At the very least, you should make sure that your URL is registered in the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.). It’s pretty easy to do.

A warning for those interested in taking more drastic measures: Search engine optimization can be a very expensive and confusing edeavor. Proceed with caution.

Some companies find that their referred traffic is low. Referred traffic will often come from a site similar in some way to your own. You know you’ve got their interest. If they’re coming from a site that they trust, chances are they’ll already have a little trust in you.

Finally, if you have business partners like manufacturers or complementary service providers (a cat adoption website might link to a business selling cat furniture…closely related without being competitive), make an offer to copromote. It’s an easy way to get yourself in front of new and relevant customers who may already be purchase-minded.

These are just SOME tips on how to use SOME of the information provided by web traffic analytics. This post was about how users get to your site — in my next post, I’ll talk about why people leave.

Advertisement