How to Start A Business Course – Planning Your Business: Optimizing Your Website And Marketing Performance – Part 4/27

You’d like to buy a pair of shoes so you search them up on Google. You see something you like, click on it to visit the website but you don’t make a purchase and just continue browsing through. The next thing you knew, you are now seeing ads from this business on Facebook, and on different websites, you visit.

How is this possible? With tracking.

Tracking is what separates digital from traditional. It enables us to analyze and optimize our marketing performance. Today, I am going to introduce you to website analytics and arm you with steps on how to improve your marketing assets.

OBJECTIVES:

• Understand what tracking is and how it is done, with an introduction to Google Analytics.
• Learn about proven ways to improve website performance with simple changes.
• Know the questions you need to answer when looking at increasing your marketing spending.

First off, I would like to ask you a question, what do you think the number one reason is for visitors to leave a website?  We will be looking at this later on and I will answer that question but have a think about it.

TRACKING

Tracking essentially means data.  And most platforms you advertise on would require you to install a small piece of code on every page of your website and what this does is it enables that Channel to track the behavior of any website visitor originating from that source.

So let’s just break that down a little bit using Facebook as an example. If you are advertising on Facebook, you need something called a pixel which is a tracking code that’s put onto every page of the site and it allows Facebook to understand what their users are doing on your site, what pages are they viewing, and how long are they spending on the site.

All of these different things so that they’re able to track and optimize your advertising campaigns. When it comes to tracking your own website, this is where web analytics comes in and this is where you can track the behavior of every visitor to your website. So this is encompassing every single visitor from every single channel. It is what is happening on your website and the people who have visited your site and what they are doing on your website.

How do we do this? It is through Google Analytics.

 

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

This gathers all your website data and generates useful reports.

• Requires a tracking code to be installed on every page
• If using a CMS like WordPress there are features that install this more easily
• This service is free, but there are similar (mainly paid) platforms available

It does require a certain code to be installed on every page. If using a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress, there are features that install this tracking code more easily for you called a plug-in. However, if you are not using something like this, you need to use a developer if you don’t have a little bit of understanding of code.

It’s not advanced at all but if you don’t have any idea of HTML or Java Script, and those words are a bit Greek to you, then you need someone’s help. This service is free, but there are similar (mainly paid) platforms available Google Analytics is the most widely used platform.

Creating a Google Analytics Account

• You need a Google account (Gmail or other email address)
• Visit analytics.google.com
• Select “Start for free” on the top right

• Login
• Select your account name – your business name
• Choose what you are measuring – website, app, or both

• Enter your URL
• Choose the most relevant industry from the drop-down (optional)
• Select your time zone – it is important to enter the Timezone where the business is situated.

Once you’re all done, you will have access to your account. At the bottom left, the blue little cog is the Admin section and this is where you manage everything to do with your account.

If you look in the middle, you can see where it says < > Tracking Info, and this is where you will get the code that you need to put on every page of your site.

GLOBAL SITE TAG

Essentially, it needs in backends in your code, on your website. It needs to be added before what is called a closing head tag on every page of your website.

Example:
Opening head tag: <head>
Closing head tag: </head>

As long as the code is between the opening head tag and closing head tag it will track properly. So once you’ve installed your Google Analytics Code and spent some time for the data to be approved, then this is an example of a report that you will have access to.

This account is a demo merchandise account. It is real data and everyone can access or request access to it. It is available if you search it on Google. You can search: Google Merchandise Store Analytics Account and you can follow the steps there. Since you will just be given an audience overview page, don’t worry about exploring and clicking anything on it since you can’t edit or change any data on it.

There’s a lot of data here and it will take quite some time to understand everything but these are some of the information you need to effectively monitor and optimize your marketing

 

 

OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE FOR CONVERSION

This part is very important and this is what we actually want at the end of the day.

Firstly though, where did you create your website, and do you need a developer to make changes? For example, do you use WordPress, maybe Wix, or do you have custom-built?

One of the first things that you’re going to look at in optimizing your website is your landing page.

 

LANDING PAGES

A landing page is the first page of your website visited by your users. With Marketing campaigns, specific landing pages are chosen or created to increase the percentage of conversions.

1. Does the landing page meet the expectations set by the ad?

Your ads need to be consistent with what is communicated on the website.

Let’s use our fictitious jewelry business –  Silvertree – as an example.

• Initially, no separate pages on their website for the different categories of jewelry (e.g. rings, bracelets, etc)
• They decide to run a campaign to promote their rings.
• To increase the chances of conversion, they might create a landing page with just their rings showing.
• Why this may increase the chances of conversion because Silvertree is 100% matching the expectation of the visitor – they don’t want to see other jewelry.

Let’s say a visitor is looking for a ring, they are going to get frustrated if they are going to see all or a mix of bracelets, earrings, necklaces, bangles, etc. They would rather just see a page of rings and navigate through that.

Using Silvertree again, an example of this would be:

They have an ad selling rings for $25 or more. Someone clicks through to the website but suddenly, they see the pricing of $50. How likely do you think is that person going to convert?

Guess that is a bit of a rhetorical question but they won’t. They are expecting prices of $25 and up and not from $50 and up. What if they didn’t want to spend more than $30? So that is why it is very important. You have to make sure that your ads and what is said on your ads meet what is on your website. On top of this, they now distrust the business.

2. Is the ideal next action after the landing on the page made clear? 

You want someone to inquire for more information after reading a blog post. You should then include a call to action (CTA). These CTA’s are equally important on your website.

So for example, there is a FB ad on your website and it says LOAN MORE, once they click on it, they are going to land on your website and if there is not a clear indication of what they have to do next, then they may not stay on your site.

3. Watch your image size and the placement of that image.

It is very common that a huge image is taking up an entire screen and unfortunately there’s not a lot of information available. You can’t tell what’s going on by just looking at one image.

People will then need to scroll down to find more information. And as much as it might sound silly, it is very common that people tend NOT to do that. If they see this big image that is not what they expect at all, and instead of scrolling down, they’ll leave the site.

4. Limit Pop-ups.

Pop-ups are those really annoying kinds of banners or images that literally pop up in the middle of the screen while you are busy reading or perhaps, making a purchase.

Those are very frustrating especially on mobile because the screen is so small and it might be too difficult to close it. So please do limit those. There are cases where pop-ups would make sense, so if you are interested in that then you have to do a bit more research. There is something called an EXIT pop up which is quite helpful.

 

 

E-COMMERCE CHECK OUT

I would just like to cover e-commerce because I’m sure that a lot of you would want to make a business store.

The work isn’t over when someone clicks the BUY button. It is far from over.

They would still have to go through the entire process of checking out, adding their information and etc.

You need to make sure that the process is as clear, streamlined, and user-friendly as possible.

Clear
It is incredibly important that you need to be clear in terms of the information that you require from your consumers.

Payment
When it comes to payment, it is always a good idea to offer several payment options. For example, Paypal, Visa, and perhaps NFT. There are many several options. This requires research on your side to understand the payment methods of your target audience or market is used to having.

Guest
This next one may not work for everything or everyone but make account creation optimal. If you think about it for yourself, when you purchase something online, you can register so that your details are saved to the website so that when you go and make another or future purchases, you don’t have to complete all those information again. It is very convenient and a lot of people do that. However, a lot of people do not like that either. These are the people who have fears about their security. They fear that their credit card details will be saved there and they might not like to do something like that. S you need to give those people an option to create a guest account.

Continue
And finally, Continue Shop.  You should allow a “continue shop” link from the cart. Again, if someone has purchased from your website but then they have realized that they want to get something else, it needs to be made incredibly easy for that person to continue shopping from their cart as opposed to having to go back. Clicking the back or home button might lose their information when it’s not set up properly, so you make sure that it is easy for people to add more products or continue to shop from their cart.

 

FORMS

Forms are used by businesses to capture potential consumer information like their name, email, the company that they work for, etc.

The information that’s required depends on the details of the business. Think about the business that you’re going to be creating – what information do you need from the consumer so that you can drive them down into a sale?

Think about a potential customer who is requesting more information, how are you going to give them that information?

An example is; setting up an appointment, booking a demo, sending a link to download a pdf, etc.

When you looked at content development, this is also another source of receiving consumer information. If you are developing valuable content, then you can offer that in exchange for their information, which is a great way to build up your database.

We all want as much information as we can get about the user, but it is important to limit the information you are asking for to increase the likelihood of someone submitting it.

Optimize forms

• Information you need vs what you want
• Higher intent, or higher volume?
• Show form progression
• Include data and privacy links
• Offer preferred contact method

 

 

Higher intent vs high volume

Someone with high intent is more likely to convert. Higher volume is referring to numbers.

High intent and high volume generally don’t work together, as the broader you target, the less relevant the audience is as you can’t possibly only “match with” your ideal audience.

If looking for higher intent, consider adding a confirmation screen after someone has clicked “submit” on the form. Essentially they need to confirm submission twice, which allows a bit of time for the consumer to think about whether they really want to convert.

Show form progression and split questions

This is something for you to test as it depends on each business, but consider splitting your questions so that only one appears on a page.

This is less overwhelming for the visitor. This, along with a progression bar showing them how far along the process they are, is a good user experience.

Data & Privacy Compliance

It’s very important to include your data and privacy links. Make sure you are in line with all the data and privacy laws for your region and ensure you include a visible link to these policies for consumers to view. This promotes trust.

All websites require a privacy policy to be accessible to visitors.

Offer a preferred contact method

If that is an option for you, ask whether someone would prefer to be contacted via email or phone. This contributes to the user experience – visitors can see that the business has its customers’ needs in mind.

Earlier, I asked you, What is the number one reason visitors leave a website?

Answer: They don’t get what they expect.

It is very important that you ensure that your message is consistent across every communication channel you have.

 

OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE CONTENT

Content is king!

• It establishes you as trustworthy, interesting, relevant, clear, etc.
• Content on your website is a significant factor in SEO.
• More time on your site means higher intent!

Before we dive in though, we need to understand what Data and Metrics are referring to just because on the Content Optimization on your website, you would be using an analytics tool like Google Analytics.

DATA AND METRICS

“There is a difference between numbers, and numbers that matter” – Harvard Business Review

This is what separates data from metrics.

Data is all the information that you receive about everyone who engages with your brand, whether it’s on your website, your point of sale system or subscriptions – this is all data.

A Metric is something that it contains a single type of data.

Example:

Data: There were 100 000 sessions on your website this month
Question: How many of these sessions came from Facebook?
Metric: The number of sessions on Facebook

When it comes to what you’re looking at for optimizing your content, you would be looking at different metrics within your analytics platforms.

 

 

SESSION

A period of a maximum of 30 minutes that a visitor is on your site. If they are on the site for longer than this, then another session is opened. Many people will spend far less than 30 minutes on your site unless you are content-heavy. One person can be responsible for more than one session.

For example, Rachel visits your site on Monday and spends 5 mins browsing before closing the tab. On Wednesday, she visits the website again and spends 10 minutes on the website. Even though these happened on separate days, they are tied to the same user so Rachel is responsible for several sessions.

Session Duration

The time, or average time, each session has lasted.

Example: avg session duration was 3 min 21sec.

Session duration is something that you want to be monitoring when it comes to content. Let’s say you have a blog post and it takes 5 minutes to read. If there are people who are not spending 5 minutes on that page, then it could indicate that there is an issue with that content. It may not be interesting enough or relevant or clear or user-friendly. So that this is the first indication that will show you that that post needs to be improved.

 

 

TIME ON SITE/PAGE

The average amount of time visitors was on your site.

• Different from session duration – this is singular.
• Time on site reports on all sessions from a visitor, not just one.

You can view the average time spent on your site (all pages), or on individual pages. Viewing time on page is useful when you are looking at optimizing your content – if you know that your blog post/video takes 5 minutes to complete, that’s your benchmark. You want to see an average time on the page of at least 5 mins.

BOUNCE RATE

The percentage of people who leave your site after seeing the first page. This metric is also useful when optimizing content – if there is a high bounce rate on a certain page (higher than the site’s average bounce rate) this is a signal to look at the page, identify any obvious errors and then work on improving the content.

It is important to note though that the issues might not be with your content – the issue could lie with your targeting. If you are not targeting a relevant audience then the bounce rate is naturally going to be high.

Check your advertising and targeting before making changes to your content.

• If your content is relevant to the visitor (bounce rate)
• If the content is engaging (time on page)
• That there might be an issue on the page

 

 

Analyzing Digital Marketing Performance

It is the overall changes to your Marketing Budget.

You need to ask yourself these questions when;

Increasing Marketing Spend

1. Does your budget allow your ads to show for their entire daily schedules?

Say, for example, you have a campaign on Google ads, you ask yourself, is the budget that you allow being blown by the day, or is it lasting you the whole day?

2. Are you seeing overall positive results from your campaigns?

From our Google Ads example, you should take a look if it is getting you a good performance. It also depends on your goals. Let us say your goal is sales, is it giving you transactions, an added low cost, and are you still profitable and not at a last? You need to make sure that is not happening especially since you are just starting. You are not in the position yet to go into the negative.

3. Can you afford to spend more?

So after seeing the positive and the negative results from your marketing campaigns, then the next question is, can you afford to spend more? Technically, if you are performing well, or if you are profitable, then you should afford to always be able to spend more because you’re not losing anything. You are actually just getting more profitable. So as much as it may seem that you are forking out a lot of money at a time, and I know that it can be difficult, the reality is that that money is going to give you better returns if your results or campaigns are performing properly or how you want them to be.

4. All else being equal, increasing spending by 20% (example) would increase conversions by 20%.

So the number of people who convert divided by the total visitors- is how you calculate it, if it is consistent then boosting the budget should be a no-brainer.

Decreasing Marketing Spend

1. Which channel is the worst performer for each objective?

2. Decrease or remove low-performing audiences.

3. Evaluate ads & pause those with lower CTR, engagement

4. Weigh up the loss in volume over the loss in cost

5. Decrease the max cost-per-action you are willing to pay

You now know the steps that need to be taken to set up tracking and techniques to improve performance across your website, your content, and your paid advertising. There is a lot more information out there, so please do more research.