I graduated from the University of Nebraska with a Bachelors Degree in Finance. I love numbers…and with the stats that Google Analytics makes available I am like a kid in a candy store. Only I just wish at times that they were bigger and better!
I want to re-emphasive what I have said a number of different times in the past. Knowing the numbers for your site has a lot of power too it…if you know how to read them? I know that most people don’t enjoy paying their bills at the end of each month like I do, but I love to watch every penny “come in” and go out. But if you know how many visitors to your site it takes to make a conversion, or how much you can spend on each lead to make a profit. Then it is only a matter of having the cash on hand to buy those leads all day long.
I want to share some personal stats for one of my websites. On avg. this site has around 45-50 unique visitors a day. Today the site has a horrible conversion rate and it’s not too profitable, but has a ton of potential. With the current status of this site, I have enough traffic too make me well over $100,000’s. It is only a matter of increasing my conversion rates. Today my leads convert at around 2%-4%. I need to get this up to at least 8%-10% to have a chance at my goal. Following our leads we have a ways to go with sales…but these goals are very doable, and we are gaining ground each day.
My last week with Fresh Egg in England, I asked Ammon Johns how I should continue my SEO education. I wanted to know how to keep up with the market that is ever changing. He mentioned that by watching my own websites and tracking what is happening there, I will know more than I could ever learn from learning from somebody else. I’ve been home for 1 month and have found this too be absolutely true. By studying my analytics I know practically everything that is going on with my websites. This helps me to know which of my marketing campaigns have the highest impact on my business. I want to share one of my recent observations. Here is an image from my analytics for the same site as above:
You’ll notice that for my organic search results I have most of my traffic coming from Google. But also take note of the conversion rates. Google is the lowest, I am not saying that Google’s traffic doesn’t convert, but actually quiet the opposite.
This website is ugly, in fact we are in the process of redesigning it now. What I have found to be true in this case is that the people searching in Google tend to be smarter shoppers. They know there options and compared to other good looking websites and better service providers we can’t compete. MSN on the other hand, has traffic to my site and these visitors aren’t as knowledgable, so we get a higher conversion rate because we are the first website they land on, in some cases.
So my message to you is … get your analytics program set up. Learn how to run it, read and profit from it. Heck if you need any help, contact me and I can help you get started.
