Back to the November 2005 issue.

Understanding Your Website

(by Peter Bohenek, President)

Your website is a wealth of marketing information that you should regularly review and work to understand. Each and every day both customers and prospects roam your website in search of information, products and services. They form opinions and ideas about who you are and what type of business you are, in terms of what you offer and your philosophies, based on what they experience while interacting with your website.

The one fact that you must realize is that website activity can be recorded. Not only can it be recorded, it can be as detailed as you want.

You can learn the following:

  • How many visitors come to your website
  • What time of day they come
  • What day(s) of the week they come
  • What they look at
  • Where they enter your website
  • Where they leave your website
  • How long they spend on your website
  • What they downloaded
  • What they purchased

Basically you can learn about your customers and prospects in ways that the traditional world of marketing could only dream about. Surveys can be helpful, but real factual data tells the truth. Armed with customer and prospect data, you can make valuable decisions with respect to marketing and to further reaching your sales goals and objectives.

Website hosting service usually comes with an analytics program that will provide you with a basic understanding of what is happening on your website. But if you are really after the nitty gritty, you should consider a program like Webtrends, click tracks or an equivalent program that provides detailed website reporting. These types of programs go way beyond what normal site stat programs do. They provide charting, scenario analysis, ROI computation and many other important features related to reporting.

Gathering, reviewing and understanding the activity of your website is like watching your customers interact with your business through a two-way mirror. You can clearly see what they react to and what action they take when interfacing with your website.

This is huge when you consider how much marketers would like to know when making decisions. Usually they don’t have all the information that they would like to have, and sometimes they don’t have any. With a solid analytics program you will be able to improve your marketing efforts across the board!

If you have any questions or would like to discuss this article, please contact us.





Statistics Corner

81% of Internet users do not open email attachments unless they are convinced it is safe to do so.

U.S. online retail sales are predicted to grow to $329 billion in 2010.

30% of U.S. wealthy consumers used the Internet for research prior to making a luxury purchase.

As of June 2005, U.S. consumer spending exceeded after-tax earnings for the first time since 1933.

35 million U.S. workers read blogs during their work day.

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