Your web stats are an important collection of information regarding your site’s visitors, referrals, and other essential information.   This information is important to you because it can help you measure the success of your marketing campaign, determine where to improve your site and how to tweak your site for success!

Below are ten vital elements of your web stats and why you should study them.

1. Unique Visitors – This component will tell you exactly how many people have come to your website.  No matter how many pages this visitor clicks to, he is counted as one visitor.  You need to utilize this statistic to see if your traffic is improving over time or getting worse.  This will help you determine if you need to enhance your search engine rankings and other methods of getting traffic.

2. Location of Visitors – Knowing where your visitors are coming from is important because you can research how to reach a wider worldwide target market.  You can see where the largest percentage of people are coming from and work on expanding your global visitor base.

3. Search Phrases – Your web stats will let you know exactly what search phrases/keywords people are using to get to your site.  Studying this critical component can help you fine tune and improve your keywords and site content for better placement in the search engines.

4. Referrals – Referrals are websites or pages from which your visitors have found you.  Study them to find out where your traffic originated and exactly how they found you.  You can find out who is linking to you and which of your articles are bringing you more traffic.  You can then submit these popular articles to more sites.

5.  Pages – This item will help you determine which of your site’s pages are the most popular and which ones are not visited much.  Analyze this info to see why some pages are so well travelled and some are not being used much at all.

6. Entry and Exit Pages – Analyze this information to find out where people are entering your site and from which page they leave the most.  This can help you stress your sales pitch more on certain pages and learn how to keep visitors from leaving other pages.  Put special offers on popular landing pages.  Spice up or add more interest to pages from which people are leaving.  Study those pages to see what could be making them leave as opposed to exploring additional pages.

7. Time of Day – Your web stats will tell you the time of day when each visitor came to your site and visited individual pages.  This can help you schedule chats and/or webinars and can help you determine when to publish new content and/or special offers and sales.

8.  Days of the Week – This information will help you in much the same way time of day stats help you.  Study the stats to find out when to offer specials, teleclasses, chats, contests etc.

9. Length of Visits – This critical information can help you find out if people are lingering on your site and taking the time to read the content or if they are clicking a page and leaving almost immediately.  Studying this information can help you find where to improve your pages and find ways to get your visitors to stay longer.

10. Error Reports – Find out if people are having trouble accessing any of your pages and getting error codes.  With this info, you can correct these errors promptly so people will not leave your site.

Web stats can look overwhelming and seem a daunting task but it is vital that you learn what all the statistics mean and how to interpret the information they give you.  Look at the statistics as a whole to find out the trends but also study the individual stats to see how you can refine your site and your marketing campaigns to bring you more traffic and longer visits to your site, thus increasing the chance for more sales conversions.

About the Author:
Terri Seymour has over twelve years of online experience and has helped many people start their own business.  Visit her site for free articles, resources, information, resell ebooks and more.  Sign up for the RSS Feed for a free business ebook with MRR. http://www.SeymourProducts.com

The Importance of a Simple well organised Website

One of the primary implications of a well-organized / good website is to keep your visitors in the website. A website is definitely created for a purpose, unless intended for personal use, which is the minority. For example, a portfolio website would want to be visited and its content viewed. For companies and internet businesses, your website certainly aims to provide product information, to make sales, or somewhat similar. However, most individuals undoubtedly prefer visually captivating designs, so on and so forth. It is undeniable that this causes no harm, but one must put himself/herself in other people’s shoes, as to understand how a visitor to the website might think, do and react.

Navigation

A web designer has to learn how to think the way your visitors think for example of the following 2 scenarios:

Situation A: Website with good navigation (2-3 hyperlinks to target page), well planned in terms of placement, and design.

Situation B: Website with poor navigation (takes forever for the visitor to reach his/her target page), hard-to-read navigation fonts and poor placement of the navigation buttons/bar.

In Situation A, a visitor will always want to be able to access his/her target page. For example, the individual comes across your website, and is interested in the product sold, but wants to find more information. He/she finds the navigation with no trouble, and enters the particular product information page.

As for Situation B, a visitor stumbles into the website, and would also like to find out more information about the product. Unfortunately, due to bad placement and fanciful font-types, the visitor takes forever, or even fails to find the navigation bar. Even when he/she does so, links to the product information are nowhere to be found, (example : home > about > products > product image > etc.[a few more clicks] > product information ).

Analysis: In both situations, wouldn’t a website with characteristics similar to the Situation A be more rewarding ergo better?

When people think about the Internet, they think about technology – but the most intriguing aspect of your online business isn’t about the technology. It’s about human connections, and how you can create these in a virtual environment. It’s commonly understood that ‘people buy emotionally, not intellectually.’ Even when people think they’re making a rational decision, powerful subconscious factors come into play. To sell effectively, we’re told to anticipate our customers’ needs, to demonstrate that we ‘feel their pain’, and to respond to clues in their body language and tone of voice.

For the online visitor, your Website is the next best thing to that in-person conversation with you, your colleagues or employees. And since so many people are researching products and services on the Web, it’s critical that your site has maximum impact in persuading them to take the next step with you.

• So how does your Website connect emotionally with your visitors?
• Do they feel listened to, understood and appreciated by your Internet presence?
• Are you instinctively meeting their real needs?
• Do your existing customers feel supported and valued when interacting with you online?
• Are you failing to evoke the crucial emotional responses which can significantly enhance your response rates, sales and ongoing return on your Web investment?

What are the key emotions that you need to evoke in your online visitors to create and sustain a profitable relationship with them. How well your Website does this can have a major effect on the visceral, instinctive reactions of your visitors, and their propensity to buy from or connect with you.

When we talk with customers or prospects, it’s important to show very quickly that we understand their issues and needs, and that we have ideas and solutions to address these. The most important task for your home page is to accomplish this initial introduction. You’ve heard the ‘ten-second’ rule about how long a visitor will stay on a site that doesn’t engage them.

• So, does your home page really tell me what you do?
• Does it speak to me in specific terms that make very clear what services you provide?
• What type of customers or clients you work with?
• Does it use language that I’ll understand even if I don’t know the jargon of your industry or specialization?

Yes sounds simple doesn’t it?

But there are astounding numbers of Websites that fail to provide basic information on the home page.

• If your goal is to get the customer to visit your store, does your home page clearly show your location?
• … and how to get there?
• Every time you force the visitor to make a decision, such as ‘Do I click on the Contact Us page to find their address?’, you open up the possibility that they’ll make the wrong choice, or worse still, they’ll just leave.
• Is it clear to me whether you can – or would want to – help me?
• Are you geared towards corporate bulk buyers, or small businesses, or both?
• Do you operate nationally or only in your immediate location?
• Will your visitors know what you mean by generic terms such as ‘business systems’ or ‘total business solutions’ or should you be more specific as to what you offer?
• Do I Feel Engaged as a website visitor?
• Your Website has to make the visitor feel drawn in – that they want to know more about your business, your products and your services – but again, from the viewpoint of their needs and interests. And you have to give the visitor a clear sense that you want to find those points of connection, and to learn more about them. If the visitor doesn’t feel invited in, if they feel left to themselves to find their way around – if they’re overwhelmed, confused, or simply not interested in your site, they’ll leave.

Think about whether:

• Your site present a bewildering array of manufacturers, products, or options without any guidance as to selecting from these?
• Think about the conversation that you’d have with a customer if this were a real store.
• If you were in a store and were looking for something you’d ask the store assistent – so how can you mirror this process online?
• Do you have ‘Help Me’ pages that guides visitors through some Frequently Asked Questions or other choices?
• Do you provide links to recommended products based on their answers.
• You could incorporate an interactive chat facility with a customer service agent during office hours, or access to a searchable knowledge base.
• Do your customers feel convinced by your website? Visitors seeing your business for the first time need to be comfortable that you are who you say you are, and that you can deliver what you promise.
• Are you anonymous – one of the most important elements in establishing this part of the connection is to show the ‘faces’ of your business. Have you noticed how many Websites don’t name any of their owners, or the people that customers will interact with?
• It’s much easier to have a conversation when I know who I’m talking to! Customer testimonials and other third-party endorsements are critical elements in establishing trust – they say far more about you than your own marketing statements. How many sites have we all seen that trumpet ‘nationally recognized’ or ‘premier provider…’? Prove it! Include client quotes and success stories right across your site where they’re front and center as visitors are engaged in your content. If you win an award, tell the visitor what that means for them in terms of how you were evaluated.
• Do I feel motivated to take action? With and online visitor we need to persuade them to buy something, or to tell us who they are, and give us permission to reconnect with them. Too many Web pages tail off with no call to action or directions about where to go next.

So at every point on every page where the visitor might be thinking ‘Tell me more’, or ‘How do I get this?’, provide a clickable link to the next step, to your shopping cart, to your newsletter subscription page, or to whatever you want them to do. Don’t wait until the end of the page – they may never get there! Look for the emotional ‘tipping points’ on every page where they’re ready to talk more with you and grab them in the moment!

Diluting the Connection Of course, it’s all too easy to undo all the good feeling that we create by frustrating or annoying the visitor, or simply by giving them a dead end. One of my favorite bugbears is the site search engine that allows me to enter my query, and then tells me ‘No results found. Please try again with different search terms’. How is that supposed to make me feel? What was wrong with my keywords or my parameters if the search page allowed me to select them? Am I being stupid? Or do you really not want to help me? Your visitor is clearly looking for something, and has taken a step towards connecting with you. So how about a results page that lets them know that you can’t immediately answer their question, but offers a link to your contact form so that they can send a question, or some tips or suggestions on how to find more information.

So how ‘Emotionally Connected’ is your Website? I hope that I’ve sparked your curiosity enough to take a fresh look at your Website. Think about specifically why visitors are coming to your site, what might be on their minds, and review your copy and navigation accordingly. Think about new customers and existing ones, employees, media – everyone who might have a reason to visit. Are you doing everything that you can to create an ‘emotionally connected’ experience for everyone? The right mix will gain you significantly higher time spent on your site, more calls from pre-qualified leads, more signed contracts, happier repeat customers, attention from new markets, offers of strategic alliances and collaborations, and insights into creating successful new products and services.

This article is an edited version of an original by: Philippa Gamse who is a professional speaker and web strategy expert who spends much of her time creating website strategies for her clients. To read her blog and free articles visit http://websitesthatwin.com for more information.

Choosing an appropriate domain name is very important. First and foremost, when it comes to domain names, try to stay away from the silly, stupid, ridiculous or clever. Keep your domain name simple and make it something your customers can remember if they lose the link to your business website.

Take note that, while your domain name on Geocities or AOL may seem like the least expensive way to go, it may also get you dropped from certain search engines. Some search engines ignore domain addresses that reside on these ‘free servers’ or on the ‘cheap’ servers.

Even if your site is recognized and considered by search engines, a professional domain name that uses your primary company name or associated words is likely to get more attention and be considered as a stable business by your prospective customers.

Purchasing domain names are not that expensive which cost about $100 and there are many companies that can register the name for you, provided it is available and has not already been used by another company.

Using one of your keywords in your domain name can increase your score on some search engines. For example, solderingirons.com could be more effective as Electric-soldering-irons.com, if that domain name was available.

You might also choose to establish more than one domain name using keywords and then link your ‘doorway’ domain sites to your primary site. But you will have to pay for each of the domain name and also the monthly hosting fees. It all depends on the type and size of your business and your competition.

Keep in mind that some search engines disregard ‘doorway’ sites. So put at least a page of content on the doorway site with some useful information and then link it to your primary site. But don’t design it as an empty page. The other reason being, you can have one, three, five, or even more email addresses that all contain your business name, and give your business a professional feel. When customers get emails from dominicstone@solderingirons.com they feel as if they are dealing with a stable, professional business operation.

No need for customers to understand how you manage all your email boxes on your domain. They just need to feel your business is dependable and reputable.

Everyone loves the Internet, but not everyone is ready to buy. There can be a level of skepticism you may have to overcome and one way to do that is let them see your face. Use online video and you have an advantage over your competitors when dealing with customers.
Successful marketing is all about establishing a relationship; and that is so much easier when they can see and hear you. You may be very comfortable online, but some people are still skeptical about doing business with you over the Internet and you need to persuade them to trust you before they will buy from you.
These are my top 12 direct marketing principles you can use to make sure your Internet marketing really works for you:
1. History.
People want to know you are not going to disappear overnight so if you’ve been in business for any length of time then this will add credibility to you and your offers.
2. Statistics.
Use genuine statistics to give you more credibility by listing number of customers served, money saved, profits made, and so on.
3. Testimonials
I can’t overestimate the importance of these so get them from your Customers and Clients saying how you and/or your products have helped them. Get experts in your market to validate and endorse your products and services and if appropriate get celebrities who you either ‘rent’ for your marketing, feature at your events or use by association.
4. Demonstrations.
With the use of online video and ‘how To’ DVDs it is very ease to show a demonstration of your product both on and offline. You can even demo an ebook by printing it out and talking through what it contains live on screen. Camtasia is free software that lets you make a screen capture video where you can demonstrate your website talking though the sales letter or giving a demo of how easy it is to download your ebook. If you are in a market that isn’t really familiar with online buying this works really well.
What better proof that your product or service works than by showing an example of before and after. Many markets and products lend themselves to this treatment and it is very effective.
In our own business we use video to show how to confirm emails when signing up to our email lists, when demonstrating how to use our Membership site and examples of results in a number of our ebook markets.
5. Credentials.
What credentials do you have in your market? They don’t have to be academic, but can awards, accomplishments, membership to organisations that are relevant to your market. Both I and Neil Travers my business partner are CIPD qualified which is a training qualification we attained while working at the Bank.
This is ‘proof’ of our ability to run workshops that are designed to aid the learning and intake and retaining of information by attendees and gives us increased credibility in their eyes.
6. Publicity.
Reprints of articles about you in the press, or your articles being published in the media that lend weight to your credibility as the expert or authority in your market are highly valuable to you. Show your market that you are in demand, and have status as an expert.
7. Celebrity Spokesperson.
To be used with caution. It can be effective but can also backfire when the market remembers the celebrity and the advert, but not what it was advertising.
8. Guarantee.
If you can’t guarantee the product you’re selling then find something else to sell that you can guarantee. To really make your potential customers feel safe to buy from you you need to offer an ironclad guarantee.
9. Accessibility.
On your website have your full contact detail if possible as this will give a big boost to your potential customer confidence in you and your company. Using just an email contact is the worst and an email, phone and address the best.
Never give a PO Box as your address as it immediately makes people suspicious.
10. The Personal Touch.
Being visible in the business to your customers is a confidence booster for them. Make it personal so you are a real individual, anecdotes about you and your business, pictures and videos all make your customer more comfortable as if they have already met you.
11. Make A Damaging Admission.
No matter how good your product is it will have a disadvantage somewhere. Admit it up front and honestly comment on this fact.
Answer Questions and objections up front and when a customer asks them via email or the phone. People can call our office throughout the week and email at any time with questions and that makes them feel safe to buy from us.
12. Excess.
Use a combination of as many of the examples above in your marketing! What may seem like overkill to you may not be enough to overcome some people’s skepticism!
FREE for you. The Internet Marketing Review is the UK’s longest running PRINTED Internet Marketing Newsletter. Just visit this special web page for more information: Internet Marketing Review

It is recommended to use keywords in page titles itself. This title tag is different from a Meta tag, but it’s worth considering it in relation to them. Whatever text one places in the title tag (between the and portions) will appear in the title bar of browsers when they view the web page. Some browsers also append whatever you put in the title tag by adding their own name, as for example Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or OPERA.

The actual text you use in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page. In addition, all major web crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your listings.

If you have designed your website as a series of websites or linked pages and not just a single Home Page, you must bear in mind that each page of your website must be search engine optimized. The title of each page i.e. the keywords you use on that page and the phrases you use in the content will draw traffic to your site.

The unique combination of these words and phrases and content will draw customers using different search engine terms and techniques, so be sure you capture all the keywords and phrases you need for each product, service or information page.

The most common mistake made by small business owners when they first design their website is to place their business name or firm name in every title of every page. Actually most of your prospective customers do not bother to know the name of your firm until after they have looked at your site and decided it is worth book marking.

So, while you want your business name in the title of the home page, it is probably a waste of valuable keywords and space to put it in the title line of every page on your site. Why not consider putting keywords in the title so that your page will display closer to the top of the search engine listing.

Dedicating first three positions for keywords in title avoiding the stop words like ‘and’, ‘at’ and the like is crucial in search engine optimization.

You can’t just put your website on the net with right keywords and all the right touches and expect your traffic and ranking will remain constant. As the web is an ever changing landscape, you have to keep track of your own web results like what is happening with the competition and also the best and highest ranked sites. There are many useful tools to help you find out what exactly is happening.

1. A tool which you can use to test your own website links or other websites for broken links:
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

2. With this tool you can check search engines for the number of back links to your URL i.e. other web pages linking to your site:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/backlinks/

3. It sometimes becomes important to know where the servers of your hosting company are physically located. Because, some search engines like Google have the ability to filter search results based on their physical location called geotargeting. This could be used to determine why your site is showing in only a certain country. This link can also be used to research the country location of a particular competitor’s website:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/website-country/

4. In order to track the location of the visitor or a customer to your website:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/geovisitors/

5. In order to check the Yahoo! web ranking of your’s or your competitor’s website use :
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/webrank/

6. Here is a link to check the web ranking of a website using a Mac or Apple computer:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/pagerank-mac/

7. You need a Google AdSense account for using this. This link provides you with charts and reports which will help you analyze traffic, clicks, and results from your AdSense advertising
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-charts/

8. If you have an AdSense account, you can analyze your website address or another website address to see what Google ads will be displayed when the customer selects certain website names or keywords:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-sandbox/

9. This link will take you to a cooperative advertising network where you can join to display and
share your ads with other website owners:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/

10. You can add the Search Functionality on your website which uses Google. This works only if your site is listed in the Google Index.
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/search/

11. Here are some links to free website counters which you can use on your website to track your traffic and hits:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/counter/
http://www.amazingcounters.com/?ref=gad033
http://www.cyber-counter.com/signup.php
http://www.statcounter.com/free_hit_counter.html
http://www.free-counters.net/

It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. When a topic is typed for search, nearly instantly, the search engine will sift through the millions of pages it has indexed about and present you with ones that match your topic. The searched matches are also ranked, so that the most relevant ones come first.

Remember that a prospective customer will probably only look at the first 2-3 listings in the search results. So it does matter where your website appears in the search engine ranking.

Further, they all use one of the top 6-7 search engines and these search engines attract more visitors to websites than anything else. So finally it all depends on which search engines the customers use and how they rank your site.

It is the Keywords that play an important role than any expensive online or offline advertising of your website.

It is found by surveys that a when customers want to find a website for information or to buy a product or service, they find their site in one of the following ways:
The first option is they find their site through a search engine.
Secondly they find their site by clicking on a link from another website or page that relates to the topic in which they are interested.
Occasionally, they find a site by hearing about it from a friend or reading in an article.

Thus it’s obvious the the most popular way to find a site, by search engine, represents more than 90% of online users. In other words, only 10% of the people looking for a website will use methods other than search engines.

All search engines employ a ranking algorithm and one of the main rules in a ranking algorithm is to check the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Don’t forget that algorithms also give weightage to link population (number of web pages linking to your site). When performed by a qualified, experienced search engine optimization consultant, your site for high search engine rankings really does work, unless you have a lot of money and can afford to pay the expert. With better knowledge of search engines and how they work, you can also do it on your own.

Referrer logging is used to allow web servers and websites to identify where people are visiting them either for promotional or security purposes. You can find out which search engine they used to find your site and whether your customer has come from a ‘linked site’. It is basically the URL of the previous webpage from which your link was followed.

By default, most hosting accounts don’t include referrer logs but may be subscribed for an extra monthly fee. If your web host does not provide a graphic report of your log files, you can still view the referrer logs for your website by logging into the host server using free or low-cost FTP software, like these:
(links have been checked and are OK)

FTP Explorer:   http://www.ftpx.com/(costs around $40 but free trial available)
LogMeIn: https://secure.logmein.com/dmcq/103/support.asp (free trial available)
SmartFTP: http://www.smartftp.com/
FTP Voyager: http://www.ftpvoyager.com/
Filezilla: http://filezilla-project.org/ (the free one I use which is very good)
Ipswitch: http://www.ipswitch.com/ (which is a professional standard FTP solution which I also can recommend)

The log file is available on your web server which can be download into your computer later. You can use a log analysis tool, like those mentioned below, to create a graphic report from your log files so that the files are easier to understand.
(links have been checked and are OK)
Abacre Advanced Log Analyzer http://www.abacre.com/ala/
Referrer Soft http://www.softplatz.com/software/referrer/
Log Analyzer http://www.loganalyzer.net/

You can view the files using Word, Word Perfect, txt or WordPad files even if you don’t have the right tool. This information is very crucial to your business and marketing plans and is not advisable to neglect it.

In addition to identifying the search engine or linked site from where your visitor arrived, referrer logs can also tell you what keywords or keyword phrases your client used for searching.

As referrer information can sometimes violate privacy, some browsers allow the user to disable the sending of referrer information. Proxy and Firewall software can also filter out referrer information, to avoid leaking the location of private websites. This can result in other problems, as some servers block parts of their site to browsers that don’t send the right referrer information, in an attempt to prevent deep linking or unauthorized use of bandwidth. Some proxy software gives the top-level address of the target site itself as the referrer, which prevents these problems and still not divulging the user’s last visited site.

Since the referrer can easily be spoofed or faked, however, it is of limited use in this regard except on a casual basis.

Just don’t focus on the home page, keywords and titles.
The first step to sales when customers visit your site to see the products they were looking for. Of course, search engine optimization and better rankings can’t keep your customer on your site or make them buy. The customer having visited your site, now ensure that she gets interested in your products or services and stays around. Motivate him to buy the product by providing clear and unambiguous information. Thus if you happen to sell more than one product or service, provide all necessary information about this, may be by keeping the information at a different page. By providing suitable and easily visible links, the customer can navigate to these pages and get the details.

Understanding Your Target Customer
If you design a website you think will attract clients, but you don’t really know who your customers are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely you make much money. Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard storefront. You can send email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website. Ask them about their choices. Why do they like your products? Do you discount prices or offer coupons? Are your prices consistently lower than others? Is your shipping price cheaper? Do you respond faster to client questions? Are your product descriptions better? Your return policies and guarantees better than your competitor’s? To know your customer you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple contact form with name, address, age, gender, etc. when they purchase a product.

Does your website give enough contact information?
When you sell from a website, your customer can buy your products 24 hrs a day and also your customers may be from other states that are thousands of miles away. Always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website, complete with mailing address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you. People may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site. Also have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often. When customer wants to buy online provide enough options like credit card, PayPal or other online payment service.