You need to encourage consumers to interact with your website, with the email channel in it, with the social media and blog on it, with the explainer video, with the menus and options it presents and from this you can identify paths people take on the website, specifically the paths to making a sale or conversion.
Analysis will help you understand how people interact with your website, or rather, how they choose to interact with your brand. From here you can redesign the website so the right messages and paths to sale or conversion are being presented.
It’s encouraging to know that, according to Decibel Insight, only 15% of website owners’ base decisions on gut feeling rather than analytics. Encouraging because however tuned in you are to your business environment, without some sort of analytical overview, you are relying on forces unknown and measurements unspecified. It’s equivalent to aiming a space rocket at the moon with your arm as a guide, guessing the fuel needed for the trip, with fingers crossed for a perfect landing. Business today is a tempest of variables and changing conditions and to navigate it you need a good compass and you need to know where you are, at any given time, so you can change course.
Reports by Experian and MIT Sloan Management Review respectively, say 73% of organisations collect consumer data from their websites and 35% of companies that use analytics state they frequently have all the data needed to make key business decisions. These are important statistics because they tell us that a significant proportion of business managers believe that success of business today hinges around analytical data gathered from the use of their websites.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
If you don’t know how your website is performing you are not in control of your business.
Many business owners who front their business with a website see the creative side of it only – go with what they think looks nice. When you use analytical software you can see the reality of how good your website is by interpreting the visitor stats. Badly put together websites are not forgiven. Websites need to be organic and alive, updated regularly, more like an interactive channel than a pamphlet and they need to evolve. This makes them attractive for SEO so your website is seen in search and it makes people like your website, spend time on it and believe your company is dynamic. The greatest thing about analytical software is that it will verify or contradict the decisions you have made about its design. If the website attracts no one and makes no sales, it’s a dud and you need to make changes.
More Than One Way To Analyse
Analytics software can be highly effective at capturing data and it comes in many ‘flavours’. You can get free analytical software or pay for it, the vast majority of marketers understandably use free software. Google Analytics, or Universal Analytics, is an extremely popular piece of freely available software which can identify traffic numbers and returning visitors, average times on site or on pages, track paths to conversions and give you an amazing breakdown or real time analysis of user behaviour on your site.
The Most Important Question
Whatever your business is, ROI is the most effective yardstick to measure its success. The question is, does using analytics increase your ROI? Well, think about it – that’s the whole point of analytics! Conversion tracking literally tracks the path to a sale. You just need an expert to understand how to use the important information effectively for positive change.
Incredibly, although over 40% of website owners are changing their website content on a weekly basis, only 14% percent track what content generates the most conversions. The most successful businesses leave as little as possible to chance and act on intelligence they have pro-actively gathered. The digital age we are in allows us to enjoy a level of detailed analysis of customer interaction that we never used to be privy to. For those who are not afraid to adapt, using analytical software can not only open your eyes to the reality of your business but also empower you with opportunities in response to your analysis.
Analytical software is becoming a must in business. It’s more user friendly than ever and should influence your decision making processes for your website and your offerings.
For expert analysis of your website contact Varn. Our Analytics staff are Google Analytics Qualified with several years’ experience in statistical analysis.
