The single most important selling weapon in the arsenal of an eCommerce retailer is their website. For most online stores, almost all sales go through their webpage. In other words, it’s the prime real estate of your business, the location where you put the most compelling deals, the most attractive products, the stuff you want every single person who visits your site to see. An accurate analogy would be the storefronts of physical retail stores. And yet, online businesses have a huge advantage over traditional brick and mortar, but one that most, strangely enough, do not take advantage of. That’s the ability to track how people view and go through your store. Can you imagine an offline retailer being able to see which displays customers are viewing most, what paths they are taking through the store, which departments they spend the most time at, and also basic demographic data for those customers? You can imagine that major department stores would pay millions of dollars for such data. Yet even more incredible is the fact that all online retailers have access to this information for FREE, and a huge percentage decide to ignore it! Don’t throw that data away: it’s a goldmine. The easiest, and cheapest, method to track your website data is Google Analytics. It’s a free tool that’s incredibly easy to install, and it provides you with a wealth of information that tracks everything from visitor data to which webpages get the most hits. It even allows you to split test pages against one another.
Here are just a few ways to use this data to optimize your page:
Use Traffic Data To Accurately Target Your Market
One of the most important things to know about customer behavior is not just what they’re doing once they’re at your website… it’s also how they got there. Luckily, Google gives you accurate information on how people get to your site, whether it’s through pay per click, referrals, organic search, or direct traffic. By finding out where the majority of your traffic is coming from, you can focus your advertising dollars in those areas, enabling greater efficiency and return per dollar. You can also find out what search queries they used to find your page.
Check The Traffic Numbers Of Webpages To Know Where Your Customers Are Looking
Using Google analytics, you can keep track of how many times your pages were viewed, and where the viewers came from. Did they start at the home page, work their way to the “About” page, then end up on the “Contact” page? Or did a majority just click on a front page promotion? Once you can identify how visitors move throughout your site, you can put advertisements and other attractive offers in their path. You’ll also know which pages you should have your best content on, and which pages need work. That data also lets you know if you are directing your traffic in the right ways, and to the right places. If one section isn’t getting enough traffic, for example, you can increase the visibility of the navigation button.
Alternatives To Google Analytics
In fact, you could do so many things with the data from Analytics that there are too many to list here. You can test site loading speed, where in the world your customers are coming from, and how many are returning customers. If you want even more detailed data, it exists, for a price. New software allows you to track how people are moving their mouse when they are on your page, or where they are looking. It then creates a heat map so you can see which areas get the most attention. You have so much information at your fingertips these days that you have an incredible advantage over both offline retailers… make sure you take advantage of it!
Have you ever used analytics on your website?
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The single most important selling weapon in the arsenal of an eCommerce retailer is their website. For most online stores, almost all sales go through their webpage. In other words, it’s the prime real estate of your business, the location where you put the most compelling deals, the most attractive products, the stuff you want every single person who visits your site to see. An accurate analogy would be the storefronts of physical retail stores. And yet, online businesses have a huge advantage over traditional brick and mortar, but one that most, strangely enough, do not take advantage of. That’s the ability to track how people view and go through your store. Can you imagine an offline retailer being able to see which displays customers are viewing most, what paths they are taking through the store, which departments they spend the most time at, and also basic demographic data for those customers? You can imagine that major department stores would pay millions of dollars for such data. Yet even more incredible is the fact that all online retailers have access to this information for FREE, and a huge percentage decide to ignore it! Don’t throw that data away: it’s a goldmine. The easiest, and cheapest, method to track your website data is Google Analytics. It’s a free tool that’s incredibly easy to install, and it provides you with a wealth of information that tracks everything from visitor data to which webpages get the most hits. It even allows you to split test pages against one another.
Here are just a few ways to use this data to optimize your page:
Use Traffic Data To Accurately Target Your Market
One of the most important things to know about customer behavior is not just what they’re doing once they’re at your website… it’s also how they got there. Luckily, Google gives you accurate information on how people get to your site, whether it’s through pay per click, referrals, organic search, or direct traffic. By finding out where the majority of your traffic is coming from, you can focus your advertising dollars in those areas, enabling greater efficiency and return per dollar. You can also find out what search queries they used to find your page.
Check The Traffic Numbers Of Webpages To Know Where Your Customers Are Looking
Using Google analytics, you can keep track of how many times your pages were viewed, and where the viewers came from. Did they start at the home page, work their way to the “About” page, then end up on the “Contact” page? Or did a majority just click on a front page promotion? Once you can identify how visitors move throughout your site, you can put advertisements and other attractive offers in their path. You’ll also know which pages you should have your best content on, and which pages need work. That data also lets you know if you are directing your traffic in the right ways, and to the right places. If one section isn’t getting enough traffic, for example, you can increase the visibility of the navigation button.
Alternatives To Google Analytics
In fact, you could do so many things with the data from Analytics that there are too many to list here. You can test site loading speed, where in the world your customers are coming from, and how many are returning customers. If you want even more detailed data, it exists, for a price. New software allows you to track how people are moving their mouse when they are on your page, or where they are looking. It then creates a heat map so you can see which areas get the most attention. You have so much information at your fingertips these days that you have an incredible advantage over both offline retailers… make sure you take advantage of it!
Have you ever used analytics on your website?