|
 |
|
|
By Kerry Murdock, Publisher
John Marshall wants to know what happens after the click.
Marshall is CEO and founder of ClickTracks, a company providing software to analyze the online behavior of website visitors.
"It's not enough to purchase keywords on a search engine merely to attract visitors to a website," Marshall said. "They must be the right type of visitors. Our analytics software helps website operators make decisions so that their paid search listings actually make them money."
Experts agree that buying keywords on a search engine without testing and tracking those keywords will bring, at best, mixed results. What's important, say the experts, is to use quality analytics software that follows purchased keywords and keyword phrases from the moment a visitor clicks on a sponsored-search ad (on a search engine) to the visitor's activity on a website.
For example, say a website owner, we'll call him Dave, sells video cameras. Say Dave purchases the phrase "cheap video cameras" at Google for $1 per click. (That is, Dave pays Google $1 each time a Google visitor types "cheap video cameras" and then clicks on Dave's video camera ad.)
Dave may notice an immediate jump in traffic to his website, but no meaningful increase in sales. Analytics software can help Dave determine why there's no increase in sales. Analytics software can track the visitor behavior through Dave's website, comparing this ad to others that Dave is running. It can record which page from which visitors exited the site. And it can track how long visitors remain on the site. If a visitor views many pages on Dave's site, stays on the site for several minutes and still purchases nothing, Dave may conclude, for example, that his camera prices are too high. Conversely, if a visitor views only the home page of Dave's site and exits it after just a few seconds, Dave may conclude the visitor wasn't interested in his brand of cameras. Analytics software can track each visitor, from each keyword phrase, from each search engine.
"It's important that the analytics provider is able to provide the data that corresponds to the conversion goals of a website," said Andrew Hazen, founder and CEO of Prime Visibility, a firm that consults and manages paid-search campaigns. "For example, we have a cosmetics client who needs to know where traffic is geographically coming from so we can follow-up our paid search ads with local television infomercials or even direct mail. In this instance, the paid search ads generated lots of traffic from Arizona, and we mailed catalogs and purchased TV time in that market."
All experts agree that analytics software enables ecommerce operators to improve their paid-search campaigns. The software typically resides on the owner's web server or on a web server controlled by the analytics company. Software stored on the owner's web server is usually purchased, while software stored on the analytic-company's server is typically charged monthly.
Prices for the software can vary widely, from $49 per month for ClickTracks entry-level "Analyzer Hosted" service, to tens of thousands of dollars for elaborate systems."We use Omniture for our clients, which is, in our view, the Rolls Royce of analytics software," said Prime Visibility's Hazen. "This software would independently cost more than $10,000, but our clients receive the benefits from it without having to purchase it directly."
With a reputable analytics system, ecommerce operators can use visitor behavior data to adjust and tweak their search ad campaigns or even the website itself.
Bob Cooke is President of Doozy Cards, an online e-card provider. Says Brooks, "We launched our new website a few months ago, and we were convinced that the most popular feature would be our greeting card reminder service. We built our site around it and bought search ads that supported it. Guess what? No one used that reminder service. Our analytics software, ClickTracks, showed us that most visitors opted instead for the free 10-day trial. So, we changed our site to focus on that."
"I'll tell you," says Cooke. "These analytics reports get to be addicting. I look at them the first thing every morning. I have analytics for breakfast!"
This article is used with permission from Practical eCommerce magazine, copyright 2006. Practical eCommerce is a printed an online resource for ecommerce businesses. For tips, tools and advice to improve your ecommerce business, click here.
Interested in looking at your web site stats? Log into your vDeck control panel and look for the "Reports" section, and then click on "Statistics." If you are using cPanel, look for the "Web/FTP Stats" section and click on "Webalizer."
<< Back IPOWER Informer
|
|
|
 |
|
|
