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Web analytics may not seem like a hot topic to some. But the use of web analytics in my opinion has gained much popularity since the introduction of free tools like Google analytics. I think that this is great because it shifts general focus from the state of promotion, to user behavior of a website. Ultimately those that are able to understand their web users are in line to win the game in the long term. Why? Anyone can purchase advertising, but getting your target demographic do what you want them to do is real art.

One fundamental question that your business must ask when choosing web analytics is whether you need a free or paid service. What seems like a no-brainer kind of question, is really not all that simple. First, there are literally some companies that believe that because they have the most expensive solution that it’s the best for their needs. Oh yeah, except of course when you ask them how they use it, only to find out that not even the IT guy knows how to interpret a simple report. Then there are companies that run multi-million dollar businesses that use free solutions because the sheer cost of a paid solution appears too high to incur.

Believe me when i say that there is no perfect or magic solution that fits all. Foremost, the solution that you choose should match to your overall experience with web tracking along with your business goals. In the senarios above, i would say that purchasing a solution that you wont utilize is probably the worst followed by a free solution that is out of its league when it comes to business goals. Which leads to a fundamental question:

Which web analytics program is right for by business?
In my opinion, there are three key components that web analytic programs offer:

1. Traffic- knowing where your visitors come from, whether you paid for them or not, and where they go when they get there.
2. Trending- basically identifying site wide user behavior & identifying what actions visitors are taking.
3. Automation- using statistical programs to aid in making purchasing decisions.

The first two components believe it or not, can be handled by most free analytic programs like Google, StatCounter, and soon to be released Yahoo! Analytics (formerly, IndexTools.) As a general rule of thumb, if you have over 50K unique visitors a month and use your website for lead generation or e-commerce, I would recommend using a paid solution.

The last component relates to automating the tough task of monitoring your paid advertising programs as well as user behavior. This comes in very useful in managing very difficult campaigns that require the aid of electronic automation to anticipate user behavior. For example, if your website garners 100’s of purchases or leads per day, a bid automation plugin would significantly help reduce waste expenditures as your watchful eyes likely cannot micro manage 1000’s of keywords. If you find yourself in this predicament, a professional solution like that is offered by Omniture or Coremetrics is a wise investment.

As i stated above, choosing the right solution is not an easy task. If your new to the whole tracking game, you might consider free analytical package is best while you learn the ropes. However, if you expect your startup to become a multi-million dollar web property overnight, perhaps a paid solution will have a better pay-off in the long run as you gain more familiarity with the program. Lastly, if you are not sure whats best for your business, ask a company that has experience with web tracking or choose a web analytic supplier that has live support/training. Regardless, staying on top of your web analysis is a wise decision no matter how you slice it. Its just a matter of how you interpret it.

As you likely probably heard, Google added search engine volume to the external keyword research tool. This was a nice break for us search engine marketers, as we have been left in the dark for accurate numbers since the disappearance of Yahoo!’s Overture keyword tool. But just when we thought things couldn’t get any better, Google released yet another keyword research Tool entitled “Google Insights for Search.”

What’s great about this new keyword tool is that you can see a macro view of industries, seasonality, and regionality over a period of up to 4 years. I like to look at it as Google Trends on steroids.

In any regards, this new tool for me fills in the last piece of the pie. Not only do we know how much search volume there is for each keyword, But we also can find out what kinds of keywords people are using for each niche category, the cities they reside in, and the peak times they search for it.

A quick look at the category “electronics” in Minnesota, reveals the top keywords Minnesotans have used in the past 30 days. Of particular note, the peaks you see in the below graph are actually not weekends. As it probably comes to no surprise, this would be great to know for several reasons. First, you should keep your paid advertising campaigns running hot during these periods. Secondly, using this new keyword insight, hot popular products such as the “ipod touch” depicted will naturally rise to the top of the list which in turn could be used for in-store specials and discounts.

Other notable features worth mentioning here include downloadable reports, search traffic numbers (if you have a Google Account), and 3 ways to start your search session. If haven’t had time to check it out yet, i would recommend taking a couple of minutes and stopping by. I think you will find its well worth the time.

It’s been a couple of weeks since the launch of our new website and I must say that I am very pleased with the recent results. In fact, I would say that our response rate is at least 15X more than what it has been previously. However, still a majority of our responses tend to be phone calls.

I have found this to be true for most businesses that I have worked with. (Especially in the service industry.) It seems that many consumers are time poor and if they can, they would rather pick up the phone and speak to a live person than waiting to hear back from a form submission. Sure, maybe this will all turn into phone text messages in the future;) But, you can’t ignore the fact that many of us still would like to talk to a knowledgeable live person.

A couple of years ago, we chose a call tracking supplier to assist us in measuring off-line responses that resulted from online promotion. Little did we know how important this technology would be for clients that not only measure their online efforts, but also any other advertising medium they were using. Many of our clients consistently use over 20 numbers or more to measure where their hard earned marketing dollars are going.

But what’s truly interesting, is that many or our clients are using it to identify shortcomings in their sales process since many choose to record phone calls (a free feature we offer all clients.) If you have never used call recording before, please be aware that many states require that you notify the end user that the call is being recorded. However, once enabled, you will get a tremendous amount of insight of how calls are getting handled through the pipe. Additionally, just as you would seek to improve usability on your website, you can use this information to better your call experience to the end user and sharpen your sales force skills.

Here are some typical pitfall scenarios that I have witnessed:

1. No answer or endless loop- the call literally doesn’t go anywhere…yikes!
2. Endless transfers- the prospect is taken though several departments and no one seems to be sure who is supposed to handle the call.
3. Call goes to the gatekeeper & transferred to voice mail- in many occasions, the call is answered by a live body and then transferred to the sales force, which isn’t present and the prospect gets a voice mail.
4. Call goes to an inexperienced salesperson- in effect, the call is mishandled by a salesperson that can’t properly qualify the call. I’m not sure if this is one of the worst scenarios, but it certainly can be improved upon with some sales training.

There are likely even more worthy points that I haven t mentioned above. However these were the first to come to mind and are all equally not desirable. At one of the jobs I worked at, we had several rules (that I still use today) to handle calls more professionally. They are:

1. Answer the calls within 3 rings- no one likes to wait to talk to a live person.
2. Answer the call with smile- consumers and businesses can actually here the mood that you are in. If you look forward to answering a call, you are likely not in the right state of mind to give the caller what they want.
3. You own the call- although you may not be the right person for the call to get to, your job should be to get it to the most qualified person to handle it. Additionally, if you can solve the person’s problem and caller asked for someone that isn’t in, you should take care of the problem as if it was your own client.

This isn’t the end all to be all list, however I have found them to be very useful in helping potential and current clients feel that our company is confident in how we do business. Moreover, if you aren’t using call tracking to measure or identify your company’s call usability, I recommend that you make that a goal in the very near future because you could be turning away business that you worked so hard to get.

If you have some other useful calling tips, I would love to hear from you.

If you’re a search engine marketer, you’ll be glad to hear that Google recently updated its keyword tool to include traffic estimates. Although this may not appear ground breaking at first, estimating actual search engine traffic has been rather difficult since the disappearance of Yahoo’s overture keyword tool after their panama update.

Up until now, only semi-reliable tools have existed such as the ones offered by KeywordDiscovery, WordTracker, and Spyfu. With Google, search estimates are provided by keyword in a previous month format as well as average monthly search volume:

Implications

One video i caught on Robin Good’s site discussed that by using AOL’s organic search engine ranking data, search engine marketers can see exactly the kind of traffic they can receive by achieving a #1, #2, Etc position in Google. As the vlogger discussed, this will play an essential role in planning search engine optimization campaigns.

In addition to the above, I find that the above tool will provide useful for preemptive ROI analysis for paid search engine programs. As prospective clients will continually demand more analysis on how their hard earned dollars will be spent, this above tool can easily be used to estimate search volume and the associated PPC click costs to determine the “investment” portion of the equation. When combined with a predicted response and close rate, an initial ROI baseline can be determined.

As these are likely only a few new implications, I think its safe to say that this tool will become an essential component to any search engine marketer’s toolbox.