TMCnet News
Is your website working for you? ; How do you know if your website is working as well as it could be? Logo Marketing & Design's web expert, Sarah... [Western Morning News (England)](Western Morning News (England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Is your website working for you? ; How do you know if your website is working as well as it could be? Logo Marketing & Design's web expert, Sarah Doney, explains how web analytics reveal the inner workings of your site and help you optimise its effectiveness. THE WEB EXPERT Web analytics programs provide huge amounts of data on the behaviour of visitors to a website. So far so boring, you may think. But when you consider that this data reveals what brings visitors to the site and what they do when they are there (i.e. browse & buy or look & leave), then web analytics is up there with content, seo and the cream of the online marketing mix. Web analytics aim to extract the inner goings-on from behind the site's facade. For instance, you may discover that your site attracts huge amounts of visitors, but that a majority of them leave without venturing beyond the home page. Alternatively, you may discover that while some pages engage readers and encourage a response (such as a social media share), others leave them cold. Identifying the less effective areas allows you to take action, so there are no weak links letting the rest of your site down. Of course, the raison d'etre of any commercial website is to sell something, be it a product or a service. Web analytics allow you to set 'goals' - the objectives of the site as a whole or of individual pages. Progress towards completing these goals can then be tracked, allowing you to see where the obstacles to successful completion lie. Another valuable piece of insight that can be unearthed is: where are your visitors coming from? Check which channels are driving them to your website (Pay Per Click, organic SEO, referring directory sites, links from other sites...). Bringing together this information with knowledge of which group provide more 'goal' completions can help you focus your resources more effectively. Analytics programs also provide data on backlinks - links from other sites to yours. Once upon a time it was simply a matter of the more you had the better your rankings. Now, however, Google and the other search engines reward quality links (from reputable sites), but penalise you for links from lower quality sites (from 'link farms' and other dubious sources). Using analytics to review your backlinks allows you to identify and terminate any links that could be doing you a disservice. Web analytics can provide a wealth of information about your site and those visiting it. As these tools become more and more sophisticated, you may wish to utilise the services of an expert, so you can reap the full rewards that analytics programs make possible. Logo Marketing & Design is a well-established brand and digital agency based just outside Plymouth, Devon. If you would like more information on web analytics please contact Sarah Doney at Logo Marketing and Design. Tel: 01752 830000. Email: [email protected] Web: www.logodesign.co.uk (c) 2014 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved. |