Everything on the Internet can be measured. Big companies and professional web marketers have metrics specialists who track every activity and gauge the effectiveness of every online investment. You may think that stuff is only for the big guys---but not so.
Any business that is trying to use the Internet for marketing and sales purposes must make a regular practice of looking at the numbers. While a single snapshot of your numbers might not be very informative, if you check and measure once a month and watch what happens, the quantification of results can tell you a lot.
Website Activity: You can track activity on your website by looking at the statistics on usage: the free analytics package offered by Google is the most commonly used software. Look at these key statistics:
* Number of unique users (this is different from HITS!)
* Number of page views
* Time spent on your site
* Percent of new visitors
* Traffic Sources (search engine, direct or referrers)
* Keywords used by search visitors
* Pages viewed (what content are they interested in?)
* Changes in traffic when you undertake specific marketing initiatives---like an email marketing campaign or article marketing
* Changes over time
Email Marketing Activity: How is your email marketing performing?
When you use a professional email management program like Constant Contact, Vertical Response, AWeber or any other, you can check performance of your email
blasts:
* How many new people signed up for my newsletter this month? How many unsubscribed?
* What percentage of recipients opened my email?
* What percentage clicked through any of my links?
* How many email addresses bounced?
* Does it make a difference what day/time I send out my newsletter?
* How many people forwarded my newsletter?
* Does the subject line matter (test a few)?
* What do my trends show over time?
Shopping Cart Statistics: If you sell online, use your shopping cart software to track what happens with every aspect of your online sales. Since sales are the bottom line, check out:
*Cart numbers: Carts started, converted (what percent turn to sales or get abandoned)
*Affiliate Income---from your resellers
*Sales Reports by product (what is most popular?)
* Sales Report by customer (what does each client buy from you?)
*Autoresponder performance for emails sent to customers
*Active carts and purchases and how they relate to your other marketing efforts.
You do not have to be a math-whiz to be able to access and use this great data. All you have to do is commit to tracking it over time, glean some value and then put it into action by adjusting and changing your web techniques to always keep improving.
Some Simple Numbers to Watch How Your Internet Marketing is Working
