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Website Marketing: Do You Forget To Check This Forgotten Website Data?

It is often easy to overlook the obvious; especially when filled with the excitement of launching a new product on a new Website. This is because you become obsessed with your examination of your initial marketing results.

You want to know if your campaign is proving successful or otherwise, and if it is not going to plan your problems start. You check your Website; you make sure all the links are active and correct, the headline, copy, sub-heads, and call-to-action are complete and fully optimised.

Perhaps you look deeper and check your advertisements and keywords and look for factors that may be influencing your results. When you find nothing, you may then have to decide whether to continue advertising or can the whole project.

Recently, I was in this exact position, when a quick look at an often forgotten piece of data immediately showed the exact problem.

Let me show you the results of a couple of days of advertising a new book with an advert on Google, which provided zero sales. Here are the results I pored over in the hope of finding the problem:

          Impressions:  12,871          Enough to give an indication of interest
          Clicks:           321              Sufficient Website visitors for first test
          CTR:             2.5%            An acceptable click-through-rate
          CPC:             £0.09            No problems here, either
          Costs:           £28.48          A nominal amount for first test
          Sales:           0                  Panic!
          Sales Ratio:   0%               My target is a 3% conversion rate

These figures tell the story, but they do not tell me exactly what the problem is; nor do they tell me how to correct it. This is where looking at data that is often ignored showed me exactly what the problem was, and what I needed to do to correct it.

I was examining the Website data in great detail, thanks to the new tool from Google Analytics, and the information jumped off the screen in large font and hit me right between the eyes. My visitors were staying on my beautiful new Website for less than 14 seconds, and the bounce rate was 85% and climbing!

On another product launch in April at www.deckingbuilder.com/ebook, which is proving successful, my visitors are staying for almost 3 minutes.

Obviously, I was using keywords that were attracting visitors who were not the least bit interested in the Website content. I had to select a new set of keywords and resolve the problem.

Information on the tool that showed me this glaring problem can be found at: www.google.com/analytics/

Make sure you check every single detail about your Website traffic, and do not make a hasty decision and perhaps change the wrong items because of insufficient information.

© Copyright 2007. Brian Hunt. All Rights Reserved.

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