By : Nidhi Gupta

With the easy availability of full-featured, free online services like Google Analytics, an increasing number of companies are implementing Web Analytics tools for their web sites. Many of these implementations still focus on older metrics like page views and click-throughs. Although conversions and overall traffic levels continue to be important, today’s Web Analytics tools – which have come a long way from the “Log Analyzers” of ten years ago – can provide a rich set of Business Intelligence metrics that allow web site managers to drill down to much greater depth in understanding user behavior.

Web Analytics Objectives

1. Traffic Measurement and Analysis

   One of the primary goals of web analytics is to measure traffic quality, volume and engagement (e.g. time spent on site ). Traffic can be segmented by source, into three categories:

   • Referrals from other web sites and from marketing campaigns
   • Free (organic) traffic from Search Engines, which depends on the quality of content and on SEO tactics
   • Paid (AdWords) traffic from Search Engines

2. Measure and Optimize the Effectiveness of Conversion Paths

   This is the usual definition of web analytics; it includes an audit of key navigation paths, calls-to-action, pricing, discounts and the power of the overall sales pitch. You can also measure the effectiveness of individual web pages.

3. Test and Optimize Conversion Enhancement programs

   Closely related to the previous item, this goal is all about enhancing revenues from a current buyer, by optimizing upsell and cross-sell strategies. It answers the questions: “How well do you encourage users to buy more? How often do you get repeat buyers?”

4. Measure “Bounce Rates”

   This is one of the simplest and most important metrics, yet it is often neglected. This metric focuses on discovering which pages on the site cause users to drop off. This is a critical point of analysis – it can highlight deficiencies in the web site, navigation or content.

5. Gauge the Effectiveness of External Marketing Campaigns

   Web site traffic analysis can provide valuable feedback about external Marketing campaigns: by source, medium (email, web page, print, blog feed) and campaign. It can be used to test various forms of advertising.

6. User Segmentation

   A site audience is rarely completely homogeneous; it is usually made up of several distinct constituencies. A highly effective way to enhance the user experience is to segment users into groups by behavior and re-orient the site for each group, with special navigation and emphasis.

7. Day-parting

   This is segmentation based on external factors not related to the user herself; e.g. time of day, geography, referring source, organic vs paid, and so on.

8. Drive Design and Usability Decisions

   Many companies make site design decisions “blindly”, without measurement or testing. However, instead of trying to guess what users will like, we can directly measure the effectiveness of various web design and usability decisions, individually and together, using multi-variate analysis and A/B testing. This means that we can improve a web site in a systematic, measurable way, while minimizing any adverse impacts.

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By : Admin

An increasing number of business entities are actively using blogs as part of their marketing strategy. Why? Blogging is providing them the ability to connect with their audience thus encouraging goodwill which in turn helps bring sales. Blogging along with video and social bookmarking is changing not only how we get our information but also the manner in which online business is conducted.

Also, if you run a site and are looking to get it listed quickly on search engines, there really is no easier and quicker way than to also put a blog on the site. It is a known fact that search engine spiders from sites like Google and Yahoo! list new blogs much faster than they list new sites.

Blogs are free and easy to run. Just go to Blogger or WordPress.com, signup and start posting. Try to start out posting on a daily basis or at least a three to four times a week then use these tips to get traffic to your blog.

• Email Marketing List is a good way to send messages to your opt in email list with links going back to your blog web site.

• Rich Site Summary also known as Really Simple Syndication is the process of delivering constantly updated content to your blog by pacing a block of code (known as a feed) on your WebPages. Try it! Having a free RSS feed accomplishes two things besides getting more site traffic. First since the content is updated frequently it keeps the search engines coming back to your site and crawling for the new information. Second it can increase your visibility among your blog visitors.

• A blog network is a compilation of blogs under a sole domain or company name. This is also an excellent way to get free advertisement and free web traffic to your site since people who visit the network will invariably be exposed to your blog.

A company that employs a well-planned blogging strategy can spur significant market gains and sales earnings. A blog enables a company to reach out to current and potential customers, in a more personal way. A blog builds connection and links between the company and its key audience which helps the company use this network over time to improve overall business. A business blog especially if regularly updated can inform readers about a company product or service, information, industry news, tips, tutorials or company developments.

A blog connects a company to its target audience and peers and starts a more dynamic conversation with the marketplace. A blog helps to show a company’s value, its online brand on the web. Once a company has built a strong brand, sales will just follow. The ultimate purpose of a blog is to brand, to communicate and to connect. Increased sales should only be viewed as a positive indirect effect of a successful blog.

Blog marketing is pretty much the same as website marketing. Be sure that you put new entries into your blog on a regular basis as well. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog! This will help keep you up to date and current and also will keep your readers coming back for more.

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