Marketing Potential

Website analytics is critical to your online business success

If you don’t know what is working and what is not working you not only can’t effectively grow your business online, but you can’t make good business decisions as to what activities you should be working on and which ones you should not.

The data will tell you exactly what is working and what isn’t. The data doesn’t lie. You can make assumptions, speculations, and predictions as to what you think will work and what won’t, but that doesn’t mean that is what will happen. The data will tell you everything. Stop guessing and gambling on what you think will happen. The marketplace will tell you with their wallets as to exactly what will work.

It is absolutely amazing how many businesses, large and small, that I have seen who either don’t use any web site analytics on their websites or have analytics on their websites but never bother to look at the data. Then they wonder why they are not getting the kind of results they want.

For those of you that don’t have analytics software tracking your website statistics, many times your web hosting providers provide statistics for free as a part of your web hosting package, or you can get analytic software for free such as Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is one of my favorites not just because it is free, but because it is more robust and better than other software programs that I have seen sell for thousands of dollars. It is also very easy to use and add to your website, landing page, or blog. To boot, about 50% or more of the websites on the internet use Google Analytics, so Google has a strong motivation to spend a lot of money and time making it better.

And if you don’t like Google for whatever reason, there are plenty of other analytic software programs available today like Webtrends, Piwik, ClickTale, VisiStat, and AWStats to name a few, so you have no excuse. Especially if you are just starting a new website, the faster you get analytics added to your website or blog, the faster you start collecting data that will tell you a ton of information that you can use to accelerate your business success and turn that into profits.

Eliminate All of the Guesswork

The amount of information you can get from analytics is just amazing. You can see where your traffic comes from, how many pages visits view, how much time people spend on your website, visitor loyalty, which websites send you the most traffic, which traffic sources convert the most, what keywords visitors entered in search engines to get to your website, and tons of other information that you can use to improve your online business and profits.

When configured properly you can know down to the penny how much a single visitor from Facebook is worth to your business. You can know what the average transaction size is, which pages convert more than others, which sources of traffic provide the greatest return on investment (ROI), and average visitor value. When you know this kind of data you can really make great business decisions as to what activities you should be doing and which activities you shouldn’t.

It is not enough to just have analytics. You must review the data on a regular basis if you want to maximize your online success. Doing so will allow you to identify trends and what I call “screaming opportunities” that you can leverage to accelerate your online growth and profits.

Get started today! Don’t even wait any longer. Go do it right now!

Damian

You probably already noticed that I haven’t written a blog post here since December 31st 2009 just by reading the title of this blog.

It is not because I haven’t got anything to say. It is not because I don’t know how to use WordPress or lack the skills to write. It is not because I don’t understand the value of blogging and creating online content. So then why is it that I haven’t posted in such a long time?

It is simply because I have been so busy over the past several years working in my business, instead of working on my business. Like most entrepreneurs, executives, business owners, and hard working people I have had so many things going on that I haven’t taken or allocated the time the work on my own company’s blog.

I probably could have back dated some posts to make it look like there have not been gaps between posts. I could have delegated or outsourced it to someone else to create posts and put them on instead. I could have uninstalled and reinstalled WordPress and started all over again, or even just deleted the whole blog and removed it from the site altogether.

A number of different things could have been done and I am sure a lot of very savvy bloggers, marketers, and other people could share many other things that I could have done. And I am sure I probably will get some people that will comment and make suggestions in response to this post.

Instead I decided to sit down and write this post and perhaps run the risk of getting ridiculed by people that know me or others that I don’t know that stumbled across this blog post. Who knows, I may even get some of you contacting me to offer to create content and postings for me. So you may be asking, “why do it?”

Simple. I decided to do it because I feel quite a few people will relate to it. Not everyone will, but some of you will relate to the fact that you have been so focused on working in your business (instead of on it!), taking care of your clients, putting out fires, earning a living, building a business, or that you have been so busy caught up in the day to day activities of life.

Just like most human beings, I am not perfect, but every day presents an opportunity for a fresh start. A new beginning from this day forward. Maybe you can relate, maybe you can’t, or maybe you don’t even care (and that is ok too.).

To me, I see it as an opportunity to pick up where I left off and work harder on refocusing my efforts towards working on my business, instead of in it. There really is no reason not to. I like many other people just need to make the time to get things like this done.

What is funny is that I have been meaning to sit down and write this post for months. I have even joked to friends and close colleagues of mine that maybe I should write a blog post explaining why I haven’t written on my company’s blog for almost two years! But as one day went by, another day went by, then a week went by, then a month went by, I finally said “F@#* it! I am just going to sit down, and do it!” And here we are.

Action is in my opinion the biggest driver of success and achievement. Even if you don’t have things perfect, it is best to just get out there and take action. Even if you do it wrong and try something that doesn’t work, you will at least learn what works well and what doesn’t. Like one of my favorite business authors (and one of my many unofficial mentors, Michael Masterson) advises in one of his bestselling books “Ready, Fire, Aim“ we should not be afraid to just take action and be willing to put it the time to get things done, even if it is not perfect.

So I am taking action and I am working on refocusing my efforts on taking consistent action. We all have nothing to lose and everything to gain. And if I can suck it up and just do it, then so can you! Start today, don’t wait. Get out there and take action! You can’t score any baskets in the game of life if you never make an attempt to take a shot. I hope this motivates you to do the same and if it does, I would love to hear about it!

Wishing all of you greatness and success!

Damian