Reno, NV practitioner of web design, search engine optimization, and PPC advertising

Web Marketing Wednesday – Set Your Goals and Analyze Your KPIs

Before we get started on methods and strategies to market a website we need to determine what our goals might be and what indicators we need to measure. Without goals how will we know if we’re successful with our marketing?

Set Measurable Goals

Most businesses set goals in every aspect of their operations. They set goals like sell 1,000 units this month, do $100,000 in business this quarter or reduce operation costs by 20% this year. The two things these goals have in common is that they are measurable and they have a timeframe. You would be able to tell if you sold 1,000 units this month, did $100,000 in business this quarter or reduced operation costs by 20% this year.

I talk with lots of business owners who tell me they want to increase traffic to their site or convert more visitors into leads. These are poor goals because they are abstract, lack the ability to be measured and a timeframe. When you set goals for your website they should be things like increase traffic by 10% month after month or increase our ecommerce conversion rate to 2.5% this year. Each website is unique and presents its own challenges and opportunities. So each website will have its own goals. It wouldn’t make much sense to set a goal of increasing your web sales if your website is a blog. Likewise increasing your RSS subscribers probably would not be a good goal for an online store.

So remember to set goals for your website, make sure they are measurable and make sure they have a timeframe.

Key Performance Indicators

On our way to our goals there are other items we should be measuring and tracking to see if we are improving our website’s performance. Of course we need a system to be able to measure these indicators. This is accomplished through installing an analytics program on the website. There are many analytics programs out there. You can read about some of them here and here. Probably the most well-known application for tracking your website’s performance is Google Analytics. Of course if you can afford it I recommend Omniture.

As with our goals we discussed earlier, our key performance indicators or KPIs will be unique for each website. On some websites it is important for people to spend lots of time on the site or visit many pages. On other sites it is all about the number of visitors per month. By comparing your KPIs to your website’s goals you get an understanding of well it performs with your visitors. So you need to think like your visitors and envision how you want them to use your website in order to analyze your KPIs and determine if you are getting closer to your goals.

For example if you run a photoblog you update several times per day you probably do not care about the length of time people spend on a page. If you think like a visitor you will see that most people will not spend a long time evaluating your photographs. They will simply go to the page, quickly view the image and then move on. Time on page might not be an important KPI, but the number of pages they visit per session would be the KPI to look at.

Here is another example. If your website provides content in a specialized niche you want your visitors to read that content, so the important KPI to analyze is the time on site for each visit. If your time on site drops you know that your content is not engaging your visitors and you probably will not reach your goal of increasing the number of visitors to your site. On the flip side, if your time on site increases you know you are engaging your visitors with what they are searching for and you’ll be one step closer to reaching your goal. Read more about KPIs on the Search Engine Journal.

You should now be ready to set your web marketing goals and after installing an analytics program you should be able to find the KPIs that are important to your site. Join me next week for another Web Marketing Wednesday when I discuss one KPI in particular – search engine rankings and the tools you can use to analyze them.

Web Marketing Wednesday – The Mother of All Questions. “Why?”

Most business owners understand the basic concept of marketing. You need to tell people about your business in order to have customers and keep your doors open. However this understanding seems to break down when it comes to the web. I get asked on a regular basis why business owners need web marketing. So let me start by breaking down some myths when it comes to this mother of all questions.

Myth #1 – I have a website for my business. That’s good enough. People will find it.

HALF-TRUTH: As I state on my search engine optimization page, the mantra for the web should be; build it and they won’t come. Today your website is competing with hundreds of thousands of other websites. Even for local searches, also called location based queries, you probably have a few thousand other websites that show up when people search for general terms related to your industry.

Now if people search for your business name then yes, they will probably end up finding your website. However, the number of people searching for your business name specifically is probably a fraction of a percent of the number of people searching for general terms related to your industry. Don’t you want some of that action?

Myth #2 – My website has been up for a number of years. Doesn’t it have more credibility that way? Won’t it show up in the search results because of the that?

HALF-TRUTH: It has been proven that age of your domain does play a factor in where your website ranks with the search engines. However, that does not mean because your domain is old the search engines will give it more credibility than other sites. Older sites can inherit some barriers that prevent them from ranking well. This is especially true if your website has not been updated in a long time. Search engines like fresh, new and relevant content.

The Answer to Why

So now that we have dispelled these myths, let’s get back to the question of why. As with regular business, your website also needs to be promoted and the concepts that you use to promote all other aspects of your business are the same online as they are in your physical location. You probably pay for advertising in some form (yellow pages, TV ads, radio ads, etc.), you probably already network with other businesses and business people in your industry and outside of it and you probably rely on some referral business from friends and family or past customers.

All of these activities can be done online to market your website and they should be a continuation of your other marketing efforts. Telling people (websites) about your business (website) is the way to build a successful business website that is an extension of your physical location and other marketing efforts.

So what is a successful website? Join me next week when I cover key performance indicators (KPIs) and determining goals.

Starting Tomorrow! Web Marketing Wednesdays!

Lately I have become perturbed, even more than usual, by myths and misinformation regarding internet marketing, search engine optimization and this grand thing we call the web being published as truths and tips designed to help businesses get some sort of understanding of what it takes to market a successful website. These misconceptions are more often than not targeted at small business by self proclaimed “experts” in the realm of internet marketing, social media and search engine optimization.

*** WARNING! Major digression coming on! ***

Speaking of the term “expert”, I despise it. I loathe it. To me, if you call yourself an expert it means you have nothing left to learn. You’ve mastered all there is to know regarding a particular subject. You’ve maxed out conventional wisdom in your area of focus and are now operating on the bleeding edge of the discipline. I doubt even industry recognized “experts” such as Rand Fishkin or Andy Wall would use that label on themselves.

I consider myself a practitioner. Much like a craftsman or a doctor, I am continually honing my craft. The techniques are evolving and so I continue to evolve with them, learn from them and grow. I guess if you stop learning then you can call yourself an expert.

*** Now we return to our regular programming. ***

So starting tomorrow I will be initiating a weekly series aimed at busting these myths and half truths. I hope to deliver real, actionable items that any business, big or small, can utilize to improve the performance of their website. I hope you enjoy it. If there are topics you want me to cover please do not hesitate to leave a comment or contact me.

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