SECTION SIX: CONVERSION ANALYSIS
May 1st, 2009 |
EXERCISE: Set Up Tracking & Conversion Testing
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Set Up Your Website and Promotion Tracking… Points to Remember
The single most vital factor in effective marketing is tracking results, testing for improvements, and acting based on hard evidence and data.You can never assume what your market will respond to. Always test common sense and assumptions.
Testing is only effective when it is done often and across several elements. Because this can be time-consuming, we recommend investing in multivariate testing software and services. The percentage increase in profits, in a short amount of time, is priceless.
On the following page, we’ll take you through the steps to set up your website and promotion tracking. You can then refer to our Conversion Resources in your Post Training Materials for tools and information on conducting tests and analysis.
Most website hosting providers have excellent website analytics already installed on your website. It’s usually just a matter of “turning it on.” Check with your webmaster or hosting provider to check.
Other free website tracking services you can use:
- www.google.com/analytics
- www.google.com/webmasters (another great analytics tool that provides different information than Google analytics)
- www.statcounter.com
Regardless what basic stat tracking you have installed on your website, we recommend also installing Google analytics (just follow their tutorial on their website for putting their code on your pages).
Also, don’t think that Google Analytics is enough. Make sure you have basic tracking such as Stat Counter as well. Google analytics is good for tracking which keywords result in sales, but you’ll get lots of great demographic and search engine information from your basic stats.
Don’t forget about the information you can get about your website and its visitors from the Competitive Analysis.
Run reports on your website’s statistics at least once a month and review for trends, growth, declines, or other interesting shifts. Try to identify which promotion activities are attributing to which changes.
Take action according to the data. For example, if you’re getting a lot of site visitors from a particular search term on Yahoo!, and particularly if you can track whether they’re converting to sales or leads (you just need special tracking software that installs some code on your confirmation pages – Google Analytics may work for this), then you want to work harder to increase your rankings for that term.
Review our Conversion Testing resources to get started testing your website and promotion’s elements. Remember, testing is VITAL!
Checklist-Setting Up Your Site Tracking & Conversion Testing
- INSTALL OR ACTIVATE AT LEAST ONE PRIMARY SITE TRACKING PROGRAM
- SIGN UP FOR GOOGLE ANALYTICS AND GOOGLE WEBMASTERS
- RUN REPORTS AT LEAST MONTHLY AND ANALYZE DATA
- LOOK FOR CHANGES, GROWTHS, AND DECLINES AND IDENTIFY WHAT IS CAUSING THEM
- TAKE ACTION BASED ON THE DATA
- BEGIN TESTING ELEMENTS OF YOUR SITE AND PROMOTIONS AND DO IT CONSISTENTLY
- TO GET THE BEST PERFORMANCE THE QUICKEST, INVEST IN MULTIVARIATE TESTING
- REVIEW OUR CONVERSION TESTING RESOURCES FOR MORE INFORMATION
