Have you put any time into seeing where your site’s traffic comes from? Maybe you’ve been putting more time into your social media efforts; chatting up your biz on Facebook, tweeting links to your latest posts, pushing your ebooks on Google Plus. How’s that workin’ for ya?
Google Analytics
Most people have at least heard of Google Analytics these days, but are you using it? It’s a free service provided by Google that lets you gather the information about your site’s traffic that can be pretty interesting.
Social Media Sites Can Actually Drive Traffic to Your Site! (not just a myth!)
I login to my Google Analytics account from time to time to take a look at the numbers; to see where my traffic is coming from; how long their staying; what pages are getting the most hits, etc… Especially if I’m putting a lot of effort in on one social network site or another, or want to see the site’s traffic numbers for the day I launched a new ebook. I want to see if my efforts are working. Gladly, they are.
For those who still don’t see the value of working the social networks for your business, I can tell you that my presence on the social networks drives about 40% of my site’s overall traffic. Forty Percent! That’s significant!
Say you had a brick and mortar store and normally had 100 customers come through your door on a daily basis. Now take away 40%. Now you’ve only got 60 people coming into the store each day. That’s going to significantly impact your business.
Are They Buying? (the real and most important test)
So maybe you are putting time in, working the social networks, building relationships, establishing trust, helping people when you can, and yes… driving traffic to your website. When the masses arrive, are you making the sale?
Does your website inspire the new visitors to buy, or at least keep coming back to eventually buy?
Things that you need to check.
- Does your site look professional?
- Is it easy to navigate so people can easily find what they’re looking for?
- Is your site’s message clear? When people first hit your homepage, is it clear how you can help them?
- Is your checkout process easy? (if you’re doing ecommerce)
Make sure you’ve got all that covered. It won’t do you any good if you’re putting a lot of effort in, successfully making an impact on the social networks, if when they get to the website it’s a buzz-kill!
Your Marching Orders
- Make sure your website is an effective selling machine! (use the previous bullet points as your checklist)
- Set up a Google Analytics account for your site. Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/
- Generate content for your site (blog, video, ebooks, etc)
- Work the social media sites.
- Periodically peek at your numbers in your Google Analytics account. See what’s working; what’s not; where you could do better; etc…
- Wash, rinse, repeat.
