Fundamental Principles of Web Analytics

Your website may look great, it may convey exactly what you want it to convey and you may think that it has all the power in the universe to entice and engage many. Now, put a value to it.

The only way that you will really know the truth is if you gather analytics so that you will understand exactly what you are dealing with. If you don’t gather the data, you will have no idea how to improve upon what you have and you will never be able to bring your business to the next level. The bottom line is that you need to get a hold of the numbers. Once you have been able to to do that, you can figure out how to make the numbers go up. It certainly isn’t enough to simply have a website for everyone to visit. In fact, that is only the beginning. There are certain basic principles that you should follow so that you can become more and more successful.

Consider the geographic area

Geography is everything when it comes to business success. Where you are located and where your target audience are located are interconnected in an extremely significant way and you need to work your business and your social media interactions to fit those constants. The geographic location of your target audience will greatly affect how much business you do and how you do business with your clients. The motivations for buying are intricately intertwined as well. Once you have set up your business and you start to analyze the area (geographically and needs assessment), you will start to acquire a better understanding of what you need to do and what you need to offer your audience. Some of the factors that have a big impact on your ability to sell your products and/or services are age, economic status, ethnic background and level of interest. If you have an understanding of your audience to that depth, you will have an edge over your competition.  Knowing the area will give you a great deal of insight.

Gather contact information

While it is extraordinarily important and valuable to gather the names and addresses of your target audience, who will eventually become your clients, it is important to understand that you are not able to gather that information from analytics tools. You can, however, try to gather contact information by other means, such as subscription lists, newsletters or  other social media connections. Contact information is critical because, without it, you will have no ability to contact your target audience. You may have a large number of visitors to your website; however, if you don’t have a way to contact them,  your relationship with those people will be over before it has had a chance to develop. It is essential that you recognize the value of your target audience members. All of your target audience members are different. They have different wants and needs and each one thinks a little differently. Of course, the one thing that they have in common is that they are all valuable to you. Some of your audience members will willingly give you their contact information and some will be more reluctant to give it to you. One thing that is for sure is that you need that information. The way to do that is to make it worth their while by offering them some sort of incentive. Your business won’t survive without it.

Educate yourself about what the analytics mean

Once you have gathered analytics, you need to understand what they mean. You should look at your successes and weaknesses on your website and the rest of your web presence. Hopefully, your business’s successes are greater than you weaknesses. However, whatever the results are, you will build from there and the next time you evaluate your analytics, hopefully, the results will have improved from the last time that you checked. Knowing is so important.

Know who your biggest fans are

As you are building relationships with your clients, you should understand that your ultimate goal is to build a base of loyal customers who will continue to return to you over and over again and who will be more than happy to sing your praises to other people they know. All customers are valuable; however, customers who only interact with you once are not nearly as valuable as ones with whom you share a mutually beneficial relationship indefinitely. Remember that is it your responsibility to show your loyal customers how much you value the relationship with them.

Determine your strongest analytics

As you are studying your analytics, you need to understand where your biggest successes occur. If you have a formula that works in those areas, take full advantage of it so that you can strengthen other areas so that the results in those areas are just as strong.

Conclusion

Being able to identify analytics is critical to your professional success. There are several analytics tools that will help you to do that, including Google Analytics, which is a popular one. Some other valuable analytics tools are SiteCatalyst,We Trends and Coremetrics. It is critical that, as a business owner, you understand your strengths and weakness and only then will you be able to turn the weaknesses into strengths. Understanding your analytics will lead to your having a clear understanding of your return on investment (ROI). Only then will you truly understand how your tremendous online marketing efforts will finally pay off for your.

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