Petes Pickles - Increase Website Traffic

As Pete has discovered, visitor traffic is crucial to the success of every Website. If you do not know how many views your pages get, how can you know if anyone is seeing your site, products or services? With an online business, you cannot afford to guess at the effectiveness of your marketing, content, message or Website design. A successful online business needs solid Website performance management.

Ideally, you need to know what pages are viewed, how long the visitor stays on any given page and what page they click next ("click path"). Also, if you can see the keywords they used to search for you, or see what link they clicked to get to your site (referral link), you have great information for SEO (search engine optimization) of your site content and keywords. This is all part of Web analytics. Pete realized, the more you know about site analytics, the better prepared you will be to get the most out of your site traffic and visitor usage.

Who are your visitors?

You spend many hours identifying your target market. Through SEO, you spend even more time, and often money, to focus your keywords, search indexing and content for this market. You devote yourself to find the optimal visitors by geography, interest, demographics and other important criteria, all for one purpose ... to get the attention of potential customers or clients.

Once you know your target market, you need to know if your efforts are effective. You do that by tracking your site visitor statistics. Web analytics report your site traffic and break down the data into usable information, including, how many total visits ("hits" on your site pages, which means the total number of views by everyone who visits your site), unique page views (views of any given page by the same visitor), and geographic location of your unique visitors. The advantage of geographic location is that you can monitor where your visitors are coming from. For instance, PetesPickles.com began by selling to one region in the U.S. but was getting site traffic from Canada and Germany. Through his Web analytics reports, Pete saw that marketing focus was needed for a more specific geographic area.

What are your visitors searching for?

Pete found that good statistical tracking provides reports on search engine keyword usage and clickstream (click path) data, including a breakdown of the keywords your visitors used to find you as well as the search engine they used. This information is priceless, as it spells out exactly what your visitors are looking for, how effective your keywords are, and it lets you know what search engines have you listed. Clickstream data will show you the path your visitors took inside your site, from page to page. This data is invaluable for marketing your site and product or service. To demonstrate, Pete had been trying to decide what areas to focus on. Pickles have a wide variety of uses, as well as different flavors. Pete discovered through the keyword reports that his search terms were all over the spectrum. There was no focus. That told Pete that a marketing strategy was needed to grab visitors that wanted specific pickles.

Pete saw that the data on the site visits reports are broken down by year, month, week, day and hour, with time breakdown by page views (total views of every page on your site) and by unique visitors (pages viewed by each individual visitor). He noticed through tracking reports that there was a much higher page view of his Picnic Pickle Relish page on Friday mornings. The Relishes page seemed to compel the highest number of clicks to the order page. No one clicked from the Dessert Pickles page to the order page. That data gave Pete the knowledge needed to rethink the Dessert Pickles page, and to begin focusing more advertising to relish lovers, advertisers and markets.

Where are visitors coming from?

When you begin marketing your site, whether it is banner and link exchanges, classified ads, posting articles, press releases or pay per click advertising, you need to know what is working for you... and what is wasting your time. Referral link reports, as well as custom link tracking reports, allow you to see what active links on the Internet -- and on your own site -- are being used. Pete, an enthusiastic and dedicated pickle entrepreneur, had started advertising, but being on a shoestring, he decided to try SEO and send out weekly press releases for a start. PetesPickles.com had been indexed by several major search engines, and keywords were easily refined thanks to the keyword usage reports. Using the referral reports, Pete saw that his SEO efforts were beginning to roll along nicely and even picking up a little momentum. Then he focused on the press releases. He sent out a new press release every two weeks for two months. Without the referral link report, Pete would have been in the dark as to whether the links on the releases were being used (unless it was a paid distribution service and that information is only for one release on that one site). With the referral report, Pete was able to send out press releases at little or no cost, and see what sites picked them up and posted them through the clicks on the contact links. So, the press release about Sandwich Pickles got a lot of attention, excellent. That was time well spent. So now, Pete's focus can shift so efforts are optimized.

Why is all this so important?

This question can be answered with a question: do you know how your site has been doing? If you do not have reports to give you the real-time traffic information necessary to gauge visitor performance, how can you know how your site is really doing? Are you thinking a few decent sales is doing well? Or because you get nice feedback, the site is ok? If this is the case, you are settling for inferior results. This is not a solid way to manage any business, and a Website is business. Why would you want to settle for "ok" when you can get the tools at little expense that can make your site soar? Pete wanted to quit the "day job" and make a real living from PetesPickles.com, and with diligence and Web analytics from VisiStat, there is a good chance Pete can succeed, and make many pickle lovers happy at the same time! Please don't settle for "ok." Move your site to the next level. All it takes is having the right information to work with. To spin an old idiom, "Visitor Knowledge is Site Power."

As Pete learned, your visitors are valuable. Visitors who turn into customers are priceless; they are the key element to success. You want to make them happy and keep them coming back. You also want them to spread the word about you. And yes, Web analytics can improve this as well. By knowing how visitors are actually using your site, which pages they visit, how long they view the pages they visit, what pages compel them to continue inside the site (clickstream), and what pages they use to leave your site (exit page) you have a great advantage. Pete understood this when he saw that the Uses for Pickles page held visitors longer than other information pages. It was written with humor and had a fun, clean look. Wow, a winner page. However, Dessert Pickles shows as a big exit page. Not a good page, it appears to kill the site visits. With his reports, Pete discovered that the Dessert Pickles page needed some redesign and rewriting fast.

Don't let your Website stall like a caramel-crusted pickle. As with any business, a Website needs continual marketing and refinement to stay focused and on target. You need to keep on top of your markets, keep fresh, interesting and compelling content, and keep your site available to those who want your product or service. Staying alive on the Web means you need visitors ... visitors who are looking for what you have to offer. With Website performance management, you have the tools you need to put your site in front of your target market, increase your ROI and find success on the Internet. And isn't this why you have a Website?