Feedback and Monitoring

It's not enough to simply create and optimize your web site and hope for high traffic and a load of customers. You need to use tracking techniques to realign your strategy and improve success rates. Your Web site's conversion rate is a measure of your ability to persuade your visitors to take the action you want them to take. Tracking the number of visitors to your website and the sales made against this number is thus, vital. The final section of this guide deals with one of the most underrated aspects of a successful paid subscription website – Tracking and monitoring progress.

Tracking performance and growth

Understanding what your visitors do on your site is crucial information, not to mention interesting. If your visitors proceed to purchase a product but then a large majority leave the site when they get to a specific page in the order process then you need to know about it. It could be that this page is confusing or hard to use. Fixing it could increase your sales by 200%. This is just an example; there are many reasons why you want a detailed analysis of your site visitors.

Most website hosting services offer a stats package that you can study. If you're not sure where this is, call up your hosting service and ask them. Statistics are a vital part of tracking your marketing progress. If you don't have access to website statistics get a package that can help you in this area. Do not get a counter that just shows how many visitors you've had. You'll be missing out on vital information that can help strengthen weaknesses in your site.

A good website hosting service would offer traffic logs that provide an invaluable insight into the traffic being referred to a web site from various sources such as search engines, directories and other links.

Unfortunately traffic tracking provided by web hosting services is often in the form of raw traffic log files or other difficult to understand cryptic formats. These log files are basically text files that describe actions on the site. It is literally impossible to use the raw log files to understand what your visitors are doing. If you do not have the patience to go through these huge traffic logs, opting for a traffic-logging package would be a good idea.

Basically two options are available to you and these are: using a log analysis package or subscribing to a remotely hosted traffic logging service. A remotely hosted traffic logging service may be easy to use and is generally the cheaper option of the two. WebTrends Live and HitsLink are two good, remotely hosted, traffic-monitoring services worth considering. However, WebTrends Live is a more complicated system and is suitable for larger ecommerce websites. “SuperStats” is another recommended traffic logging service.
These services do not use your log files. Typically a small section of code is placed on any page you want to track. When the page is viewed, information is stored on the remote server and available in real time to view in charts and tables form.

Log analysis packages are typically expensive to buy and complex to set up. Apart from commercial packages there are also some free log analysis packages available, such as Analog.

A good traffic logging service would provide statistics pertaining to the following:

 

• How many people visit your site?

 

• Where are they from?

 

• How are visitors finding your site?

 

• What traffic is coming from search engines, links from other sites, and other sources?

 

• What keyword search phrases are they using to find your site?

 

• What pages are frequented the most - what information are visitors most interested in?

 

• How do visitors navigate within your web site?

Knowing the answers to these and other fundamental questions is essential for making informed decisions that maximize the return on investment (ROI) of your web site investment.

The most important aspect of tracking visitors to your website is analyzing all the statistics you get from your tracking software. The three main statistics that will show your overall progress are hits, visitors and page views. Hits are tracked when any picture or page loads from your server on to a visitor’s browser. Hits, however, can be very misleading. It is quite an irrelevant statistic for your website.

The statistic that is probably the most important for a website is Page Views/Visitors. This gives you a good indication of two things. First, how many people are coming to your site, and secondly how long are they staying on your site. If you have 250 visitors and 300 page views you can figure that most visitors view one page on your site and then leave. Generally, if you're not getting 2 page views per visitor then you should consider upgrading your site's content so your visitors will stay around longer.
If you see the number of visitors you have increasing as well as the number of page views per visitor increasing then keep up the good work! Always look for this stat as an overall barometer of how your site design is going and if your marketing campaigns are taking hold.

Also, a good stat to look for is unique visitors. Once a person visits your site they will not be added to the unique visitors’ category if they visit again. This is a good way to track new visitors to your website.

Page views are a good indication of how "sticky" your website is. A good statistic to keep is Page Views divided by the number of Visitors you have. This statistic will give you a good idea if your content is interesting and if your visitors are staying on your site for a long time and surfing.

Some people are intimidated by web traffic statistics (mostly because of the sheer volume of data available), but they shouldn't be. While there are many highly specialized statistics that can be used for more in-depth web traffic analysis, the above areas alone can provide invaluable information on your visitors and your website performance. Remember- this data is available for a reason. It's up to you to use it.

Tracking your sales

Like any business, it is absolutely vital to track and maintain your sales records. You should know every month your income and expenditure. This would give you a good idea of which products are in demand and which ones are not.

There are many ways to keep track of your sales. Using orthodox methods such as keeping a paper journal is time consuming. Simple spreadsheet programs as well as basic accounting software are available at no or minimum costs. However, it is advisable to install advanced accounting software such as QuickBooks, Quicken, or Microsoft Money.

Such advanced programs save you time by sorting your register transactions by date, transaction amount, document number (e.g. check number), order entered, or cleared status. The tracking feature included in such software tracks, by user, changes made to each transaction. Daily, weekly, monthly as well as yearly sales reports can be generated with a few clicks. These reports help you analyze the sales of each and every product. Logs and reports can be generated to keep track of all your customers.

Receiving Customer Feedback

The most important person visiting your website is not your mother or your best friend, so why rely on their opinions when designing a website? Your "customer" must be able to tell you what they think. Their comments, questions and suggestions can help you make your website the most useful, but only if they send such feedback.

There are people out there who will give you their opinion without any kind of prompting. They'll click around your website and then look for a "feedback", "contact us" or "about us" link to tell you a link is broken or ask how to become a client. Make it easy for them by offering the following information on your website:

1. Your email address

 

2. Your phone number (preferably toll-free)

 

In addition, consider adding one or more of these:

 

• A feedback form

 

• An instant message link

 

• A bulletin board

 

• A guestbook

What do you do if your visitors do not respond? Only a very small fraction of the people visiting your website will bother to contact you about a broken link or to tell you they loved your website.

One option to encourage a higher degree of feedback is by offering a short survey (preferably right on your home page). Even better, offer them a freebie (a newsletter or a special report) as a token of your appreciation.

The bottom line is that customer feedback is extremely valuable. You need to know what your customers think of your website and your products or services. Customer feedback can help you improve the usability of your website and your products, giving you a competitive advantage. Keeping in touch is worth the price, so set up a customer feedback system today.

Visitor and customer registration

It is common on most sites and portals to see a Visitor registration form. However, some incentive is surely needed to prompt a visitor to register and provide you their profile and e-mail address. You could offer some interesting information, free, through download. Visitors may be prompted to register before they can avail this freebie. You could also have a weekly (or monthly) newsletter or ezine with interesting content and could ask visitors to sign up to subscribe to this free service where you could e mail them the newsletter or ezine. This is an opt-in list of prospects, which is extremely valuable. These are the persons who are interested in the type of information or service you offer and you have a chance of converting some of them to your paying customers or members. Make sure that you provide clear guidelines of your privacy policy when you ask visitors to register and always allow them to opt out at any stage. Your prospective buyers will value these features and it will promote the sense of trust and transparency.

The information that you receive from the registration form can be analyzed to study the profile of your visitors, their preferences. Their sign-in and sign-out patterns also tell you a lot about what is attractive to them and what is not.

If you have a password allocated to these visitors and you prompt them to use the password each time they enter a specific section of your website, your application can record the session information of each unique visitor and this can provide you valuable insights into their behavior.

An advantage with membership websites is that your customers are identified through their login details and thus you can track each visit of your customer. If you are offering them information or valuable content on the site, you can set your analysis to check what content or section has been most sought after, and which one was the least visited. If you are offering documents for download, you can similarly track number of downloads for each document.

Your strategy is not just in collecting this valuable information, but also in learning from it and re-aligning your strategy in accordance with it.
Fine tune your website

Your work is only half done when you create a very effective website and achieve higher sales and traffic. To hold a comparative advantage over your competitors, it is essential that you keep fine tuning your website according the needs and demands of your customers.

All the above mentioned tracking and feedback features would help you in laying out a clear strategy to maintain your profits and in time, even scale up your website. Tracking and feedback would help you understand better whether your website is appealing to all markets and whether your content sells your story effectively and engages your customers.

The key is to constantly update your marketing and promotion strategies. It is always a good time to take stock of what's working for you, and what needs some attention.

Building credibility and maintaining it

Finally, make sure that you build trust and credibility for your business. Credibility is a key ingredient for any successful business venture. Building and enhancing the credibility of the products and services you offer is an ongoing and full-time effort.

Why not make sure the web site you use works as hard as you do to establish credibility? Let's look at elements that can be built into a well-designed web site to enhance credibility in the eyes of your potential customers.

Offer a Guarantee

Nothing beats a solid, believable guarantee for building credibility online. It may be hard to believe but buying via the Internet is still unfamiliar, and uncomfortable, territory for the majority of people. It is up to you, the business owner, to put their minds at ease. One way to do this would be to offer an unconditional, 100% money back guarantee. By assuming all of the risk, you will earn instant credibility points with most potential customers.

Provide Contact Information

Even the best guarantee won't help establish credibility if the potential customer cannot contact you. Post accurate contact information on your web site and make it easy to find. Provide as many methods of contact as possible; do not simply post a link to an email address. For maximum credibility, post the complete mailing address, phone number (preferably a toll free number), and email addresses for customers to use if they feel the need to contact you.

Use Testimonials

Testimonials are the Internet equivalent of word of mouth advertising. They can be very effective tools for building credibility provided they are believable. To get quality testimonials, ask your past customers for their opinion. Obtain their permission to use their words and names as part of your advertising. Avoid celebrity endorsements; most people assume these are paid endorsements.

Provide a Brief Bio

Familiarity is one of the most effective tools for building credibility on the Internet. How do you establish familiarity in a faceless, impersonal medium like the Internet? Simple, tell people about yourself. Post a page that provides a thumbnail sketch that describes who you are. Be sure to include personal data as well as professional credentials. Place your photo on the page so people can put a face with your name. Creating familiarity will impart another level of credibility for you and, by extension, for the product you represent.

Emphasize Transaction Security

Nearly everyone recognizes the need to conduct secure exchanges of information via the Internet. Emphasize the fact that transactions from your web site are secure. Place statements to this effect prominently in any location where personal information is requested. Letting your customers know that you recognize their security concerns will add credibility to your site.

Privacy Policies

Most reputable web businesses have established privacy policies to protect the information provided by their customers. Make certain your customers can access and read your privacy policy by placing links near any location where personal information is requested. Be sure the policy clearly spells out if the customer’s information will be shared with any other businesses. To maintain the credibility it is necessary to deliver on the assurances each element provides. Be sure to update policies and contact information regularly. Follow through on all guarantees promptly and cheerfully. Review the security procedures on a regular basis to be certain they are still adequate for the task.
With proper implementation and due diligence, each of these elements will establish and add to your online credibility.

Keep your site innovative and fresh

It is important for you to keep bringing back your customers and your prospects to your site, again and again. If they find nothing new every time they visit, well, they will just stop coming, If you are running a periodic subscription site, you must realize that it is not enough to have customers sign up once – you want them to continue their membership. Membership renewal is a strong signal that your site is delivering value. Dropouts, on the other hand, are telling you that you are not doing such a good job.

Introduce new and innovative features in your site from time to time. You may run a new survey and provide the findings on your site. You may run a contest or special scheme. You could organize web casts presented by specialists or vendors. You could even organize face-to-face events – professional or leisure – to promote a community feeling in your members. Providing news summaries or vendor evaluation reports or articles on new developments in your field is a very effective way of keeping your website fresh and pulling visitors to it again and again.

You may also consider repurposing your web content to suit the changing tastes and preferences of your target market. Move with the time. You have to be on your toes in the content or membership business. Its not a business area, where you can sit back and relax after you have launched a great product. Always take a long-term view of your business and build up on your success, step-by-step. ‘Making a quick buck’ is good for junk sales copy and that is where it remains.

Scaling up

If you are keeping your site innovative and fresh and are enhancing its value, your custom will grow. When you see that the number of customers is growing, its time to bring out your stage II business plan. Maybe you had begun with a single subscription level for members, where all members were treated alike and had the same privileges. If your membership has become sizeable, consider offering levels of membership – a Premium or Platinum membership where the customers pay something more and get access to more valuable content or privileges. You could offer them discounts to certain books, training sessions, and events or organize their networking with peers or other business owners. You could offer them special one-on-one training or guidance sessions.

Finally, when you notice that traffic to your site has increased beyond a certain level, it is time to think of scaling up in more senses than one. You may need to arrange for more web space or move to a better hosting environment. You may have to upgrade your web application to maintain or improve performance. You may also need to upgrade your back up and restore facilities. You are lucky that you have to handle growth pangs!

That’s it for Volume I of Money Secrets. We’ll be publishing many more ebooks like this one sharing different types of information that will help you create your own home business. If there are topics you would like for us to cover just drop an email to liz@tomeymarketing.com

To your success!

Liz Tomey
http://www.TomeyMarketing.com
http://www.TheMoneySecretsVolumes.com