In an article published by David Maister – ‘Strategy and the Fat Smoker’ – the point is made that if you told an overweight smoker his goal must be to lose 50 pounds (or about twenty kilos) in a year, the prospect would be terrifying and he probably would not move at all. However, if you ask him to focus on losing one pound a week, the likelihood that he’ll participate, and even be motivated to weigh in regularly and accomplish the goal in 50 weeks, is infinitely higher.
For most of us, getting on the scales is only difficult because we don’t want to see the results.
Measuring online results is also daunting, but usually because we don’t know what to look at, and what the results mean anyhow!
To test and measure marketing campaigns is still as critical today as it has ever been. When it comes to online marketing we are still breaking frontiers. At this point ‘suck it and see’ is very much rule of thumb. What we do know is that electronic communication is definitely the way of the future, and there are some remarkable opportunities for massive business growth through web marketing.
At Connecting Images we believe that to ensure effective online marketing there are three important steps; the first is to have a strategy, the second to break it down into achievable goals, and the third to measure the results regularly.
Some important measurement opportunities:
1) User sessions This tells you the number of times the site was accessed in a given period (note it may contain the same user visiting on a number of different occasions).
2) Unique visitors This tells you the number of different users that visit the site, regardless of how many times they visit.
3) Peak times When most people visit your site. Is it on the weekend or during work hours? Did a particular marketing campaign or editorial exposure drive traffic to the site?
4) Referrers by keyword What are the terms that people searched for to find your site?
5) Length of stay Are visitors coming and staying or do they hit the ‘back’ button as soon as they land on your site?
6) Path (including entry and exit pages) What path does the user take when navigating through the site? Do they enter via the home page, then click on the contact page? Are they searching for product information and then taking actually making contact with you? (If not why not?)
To begin measuring the effectiveness of your online marketing, Google provides much of the required information through the Google analytics tool (available free to Google account holders). Alternatively, ask your web host about its measurement options or contactus about our consulting service, to help get you started.