Generating Market Intelligence Through Your Website

Do you know how many people visit your website on a daily basis? Do you know how they are arriving at your site? Do you know how long they stay at your site? If you do, that’s good, but it’s not good enough. How about knowing who your visitors are? If you are conducting a search marketing campaign, how about the search term an individual user used to get to your site? Do you know which particular products or services they are interested in? Are you able to quickly access this data and run reports for analysis?

What I’m getting at is how much market intelligence are you gaining from your marketing campaigns? The best way to maximize this effort is to use custom online applications that allow you to capture, store and retrieve information vital to your marketing efforts.

In its most basic form, a custom online application could be as simple as storing data collected through an online form that is then exported for further analysis or used within another application. But, let’s explore some more complex models. Let’s assume you launched an interactive campaign combining search marketing, rich media ads and email marketing. Let’s also assume you sell products through your website. By implementing a custom online application or customizing your ecommerce solution, you are able to do the following:

• Track all search terms that brought specific visitors to your site that led to an actual purchase.
• Track all rich media banner ads that brought specific visitors to your site that led to an actual purchase.
• Track all email marketing messages that brought specific visitors to your site that led to an actual purchase.
• Track the effectiveness of different versions of your banner ads and emails.
• Follow up with customers that meet specific criteria by querying the stored data.
• Provide your customers with a method to provide feedback, facilitating an automated dialogue.

The list can go on but essentially, a customized online application allows you to gather market intelligence and provide your customers with a more powerful, customer-centric approach to conducting business with you. Online applications require high-end programming and technology tools. In most cases, it is best to outsource this type of work to experts. If your site is just “brochure-ware” at this time, consider investing in a custom online application. If you use it wisely, the payoff will be more than worth it.

For more information about generating online marketing intelligence through your website, please contact us today!