Top 10 Small Business Analytics: Website Measurements

With great digital marketing efforts, comes great analysis responsibility!

Now, more than ever, the importance of analytics in digital branding is critical. With the abundance of data (big, medium or small) available it would be detrimental to your brand to ignore this information.

Processing this information and turning it into clear, meaningful analysis can ensure you are constantly improving your strategy. Making informed decisions based on actual performance as opposed to educated guesses eliminates the "shot-in-the-dark" approach to marketing success and establishes a systematic process that can directly correlate marketing efforts to actual performance.

For majority of small to medium businesses, this is the missing link between online efforts such as social media posts or blogging and actual business success. How do you qualify or quantify success of a blog post? Quote submission form on your website?

Here are our top 10 small business analytics and how they can help you do some starting analysis for your online efforts:

1. Pageviews (Most Consumed Content)

Simple and to the point - which pages are viewed the most on your website. See which pages visitors engage on a regular basis. The home-page may be the most viewed because people have it bookmarked or remembered, but any of the other pages which get high pageviews could hint at interesting content, particularly when it comes to blog posts.

Click to enlarge.

This can be a crucial part of your content direction - discover which topics or segments of interest the visitors are consuming most and focus your content creation towards audience needs.

Analytics turned into insightful analysis with a simple measurement!

2. Traffic Sources

While you may be working hard to increase search engine results, your traffic volume might be coming from a completely difference source: referring website? social media? The traffic sources breakdown helps you determine the origin of your visitors.

Click to enlarge image. In this case majority of the traffic is coming from social networks, which makes sense as our blog posts do get shared on a variety of different social sites and it seems to be resulting in clicks!

Perhaps some of your digital marketing goals can include increased visits from referral sources - did you recently guest blog for someone? Have someone mention you in their blog? These could be tactical ways of increase reach and focusing on the performance of a specific traffic source.

3. Referring Websites

Speaking of referrals, knowing which websites or web pages link back to your posts or pages can help you identify niche locations for your business.

Click to enlarge image. T.co in this case is a Twitter link, but right underneath you can see that techvibes.com website brings in second most traffic. Thirdly, since we setup this blog as a subdomain it also counts as a referral to our nrdigitalbranding.com hub.

4. Technology/Operating System

Another important measure to keep in mind: what type of technologies are your digital community members using? This can guide your web presence so that it is properly setup to be viewed on tablets, android devices, iphones or any other technology capable of loading a web page.

Click to enlarge image. If you look above there is a good mix of Windows, Android, iOS and Mac visitors.

With this information you can optimize your website to optimally perform across all of these devices, browsers and operating systems. In case you missed our 2013 SMB Holiday Wish List, make sure you add responsive design as part of your "must have" list. Responsive web design simply means having a mobile, tablet and desktop friendly version of the website (it appears nicely across all types of devices).

Additionally, if you discover that majority of your visitors come through an Android device - it might be worth looking into developing a mobile app to make it easier for them to consume your content or engage with your brand.

As you can see - this information can open up a lot of possibilities for building your digital branding effectively.

5. Landing Pages

Knowing which of your pages are engaged the most can help you identify what type of content or information draws interest for your audience (and which does not). Usually having a secondary dimension of sources can also help you discover how the visitors are coming to these pages.

 
This is a great way to connect your digital marketing efforts to business goals. Show how your search engine rankings (SEO), social media efforts, blog comments, etc. are performing!

6. SEO Queries

Alright so by now we all know that keywords are equal to (not set) value - and this is most likely going to disappear in the near future due to privacy issues. However, there is still a way you can uncover the CTR (click-thru rate), impressions and clicks from the keywords people search. You do have to have Google Webmaster Tools connected to Google Analytics in order for this to work. Done correctly, you should start seeing the following data:

Click to enlarge image. You can see the overall impressions, clicks, average position on Google and CTR.

If you don't know where to find this information: it is under the Acqusition-Search Engine Optimization-Queries location in GA (Google Analytics):

Click to enlarge.

Although not a complete overview of keyword performance, it does provide some data to show the amount of impressions and clicks for focused keywords.

7. Geo Location

While many small, local shops operate in a specific geographical area (especially retail based organizations) it is not surprising to get visitors from surrounding areas - especially if your brand becomes know for a certain specialty or product.

In this case most visitors are from Waterloo (as expected), but there is a large secondary number of Toronto visits meaning that the web pages are drawing interest beyond the tri-cities and reaching out into the GTA.

Knowing the visitor's location can help you expand you presence in different areas, and helps you provide service to ALL customers - not just those within close proximity of the physical location.

8. Page Drop Offs (Customer Path)

This is a very cool tool as part of the overall GA reporting system. It allows you to view the pathway a visitor took throughout your site - I usually prefer to use landing page as a starting point to see where the path begins and follow it to the drop-off page.

The drop-off is a very important factor in this view since it tells you after which page the visitor decided to exit your website - having high drop-offs after the 1st or 2nd interactions is not necessarily a bad thing, it could mean that the visitor was able to find what they were looking for without having to go through multiple pages.

Click to enlarge image. Here you will see the visitor flow of all the people that entered the website through the home-page. If you look at the SEO web page (large white bubble with information) - this is information displayed by simply hovering over the page. It shows the amount of visits, people that dropped-off (left the website) and people that went through to other sections of the website.

This view can also help see the pathway someone took to get to an actionable goal (submitting a contact form). It is also flexible in the visitor information - segmentation is available by location, source, medium, social network, etc.

9. Goal Performance (Form Submission, File Downloads, etc.)

Setting up goals to measure certain actions can help you directly connect visitors actions to your marketing goals - how many leads (contact form submissions) or PDF file downloads (content consumed) did the website have for the specified period? This is a great way to connect digital strategy with performance to discover how successful your tactics are.

A good, comprehensive guide to GA goal setting can be found here.

10. E-Commerce Conversion

If you do run a website with purchase options, it would be beneficial to hire a developer to implement e-commerce tracking through GA. It has the ability to track average order value, source of purchase (if someone came via Google Search or a Social Media Network to complete a purchase), CTR (click-thru rate) and many other transaction-based information.

Although we do not have a shopping site here, we do work with organizations which track this information. If you need to get familiar with this option, take a look at this comprehensive guide from Google's own Justin Cutroni (analytics guru at Google).

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That is our top 10 small business analytics for website measurement list for any small business getting their feet wet with analysis. It can be an overwhelming start, but once you get familiar with the reporting tool and provided data - the analysis opportunities are endless.

This is by no means a complete list and we would love to hear what types of analytics your organization finds useful in guiding its digital branding strategy. Leave a comment and let us know!

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Unknown Tuesday, March 18, 2014  

Why Online Small Business Branding Is Like a Rock Concert

I am a big fan of metal (if you have not yet heard of Mastodon, you need to check them out!) and rock, sometimes heavy - sometimes mellow, depending on my mood. Over the past two years I really got into concerts and music festivals (nothing like a muddy, outdoor heavy metal festival on a sunny & rainy summer day at Heavy TO in 2012).

Recently, I have been invited to go to a small venue for a local Hamilton, Ontario band called Monster Truck - I had my doubts. I heard a couple of their songs on the radio but that is about it, the venue was small - but I gave it a shot.

They did not only stump all of my assumptions, but rocked out in the best way possible. The amazing energy, sound - crowd involvement and best of all: a great musical experience. I went from leaning back on the bar to jumping, headbanging (its just not the same without long hair) and video recording most of the songs.

So how does this tie into small business branding online? Well just like me; a not-so-familiar concert goer of a local band, some of your audience members probably do not know too much about your local business. Once they enter your social media sphere, your brand has to bring the energy, content and genuine interaction in order for them to have a memorable experience, and hopefully become fans going forward.

Let's breakdown the connection even further:

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The Band

The band = your team. The band is made up of 5 members: the singer, guitarist, bassist, drummer and band manager. Without each teammate the band would not be able to function, much like a great small business or marketing team. The world wide web, social media networks and ebalsts (virtually anything digital) is your concert hall.

Once you step onto that stage you have to constantly be focused, bring your a-game and have a set list ready to play in order to engage your audience. All eyes are on you, and everyone has paid for their ticket - eagerly waiting to hear what content you put together for the show.

The digital brand strategy is your band's tour plan, while your individual concert set lists is the content you plan to deliver on a nightly basis.

Now that you have the plan laid out, and the tour has been finalized - let's look at each team member's role in this rock tour.

Singer

The front-man of the group; always bringing the emotion, energy and directly engaging with the crowd. Finds creative ways to get the group involved and makes sure that everyone is having a blast. This would be the SEO/social media specialist of your team. 

Directly interacting with your brand's audience members and coordinating all content efforts - as a front-facing role, this person has to be ready to engage the audience, provide timely customer interactions and find creative ways to keep the community rocking out.

Guitarist

Shredding epic riffs, and providing the main sound for each song - the guitarist takes each song to the next level. Once the vocals die down, the drums slow down - the guitar solo brings on sounds that make the entire concert hall go crazy. Having epic riffs and sounds is crucial; just like having a digital strategist to plan out epic content. 

Your digital branding strategist comes up with content, the schedule, ideas, execution and everything that makes a good blog post, social media update, infographic, video, or any piece of content look great.

Each and every week (or concert) there is a planned set of solos of content that will engage your audience. While the singer delivers it to the audience, the guitarist makes them headbang!

Bassist

Usually overlooked, but nonetheless important part of the band. Hangs out in the back - provides depth to the sound and gives each song that completing sound. Bassists usually do their research and are very knowledgeable on music, giving feedback and direction to the band. This would be your analytics and analysis person, responsible for measuring the success of all online efforts.

Good analytics professionals have a keen ability to take data and turn it into meaningful analysis. Continuously monitoring and improving all strategies is key to adapting to an ever changing digital landscape. 

Having someone that can help shine light on huge amounts of data, find trends - connect variables to performance, is a huge benefit for your band's long term success.

Drummer

Usually taking the back-seat to the rest of the team, the drummer provides the sound that connects the entire song. Follows the tune of each song, makes sure it sounds good and ads the connecting drums beats without which none of this would be possible. This of course is your technical developer role. 

If your organization is involved with anything online, you need to have a dedicated IT/web developer teammate that knows the how-to of all the efforts; social metadata, web development, social apps, database integration, API, etc.

 At some point in time you will run into technical difficulties or challenges, and having someone who understands the language will ensure you can utilize all of the necessary tools to make your concerts (or online interactions) go smoothly.

Band Manager

The person that makes it all happen, believes in the band and goes out of their way to make sure it succeeds. This of course is the small business owner, or marketing manager.

The manager constantly learns new ways to stay relevant, gives motivation to his team and ensures that they have the necessary tools to be successful. They usually go out of their way to make things happen and give regular feedback (both positive and negative) to the team based on performance.

What separates a good band manager from the bad? They allow autonomy, encourage development, provide direction and give the band confidence to truly create an epic sound (or brand personality).

Alright now that we've covered the band, lets see what the audience is made-up of!

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Audience

The real reason any band or brand exists in the first place - the people who listen to the tunes, buy stuff or in any way interact with the b(r)and. The audience members for each concert are made up of three different types of fans: crowd surfers, casual listeners and new to the scene.

Image courtesy of ponsuwan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Each of these audience members experiences the concert differently, and depending on how your concert goes - they could move from one category to the other.

Crowd Surfers

The loyal fans that try to make it out to every show they can - they buy all the records, they actively talk about the band in forums, social media and eagerly wait for new music to be released. This would be your brand loyalists - people who love the brand and regularly consume it.

This is your bread and butter, the people who re-tweet, share and like most of your social media updates. They can't wait to see what is going on with your brand and willingly encourage others to become brandlievers (terrible pun, I know).

However, if they attend your concert (or join your social media network) and you fail to perform with epic content, or bring energy like they are use to your brand bringing, they may slowly lose their interest and move into the casual listener section.

Casual Listeners

This group of fans listens to the music occasionally - depending on their mood they may or may not go to your concert. If it's convenient for them to attend, they will - but will not go out of their way to see a live performance. These are people who sometimes engage your brand and use your services/products, but do not actively seek it.

The best way to reach this segment is to have a contextual approach - when they need something you offer, make sure that you are available and relevant at the time of need.

Think of it as having a concert in their home town, on a night they feel like heading out with their friends and listening to some great tunes, by no means an easy thing to do. Depending on their long-term experience with your brand they could either become crowd surfers or remain casual listeners.

New to The Scene

Image courtesy of phanlop88 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Last but not least - these are people who have not yet heard of your band (or have to a limited extent) and got convinced by their friends to come along for the experience. These are your potential customers.

These will be new followers on social media, new visitors to a website or first-time consumers of your brand. The first experience you create is a memorable one - if you cannot deliver the first time around, the potential will not be realized.

This audience group is the most interesting as it has the potential to become a brand loyalist, casual buyer or completley opposed to the brand. It all varies by their first experience at the show.

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That is the connection between rock and digital branding. Of course some team members may take on shared or less responsibilities than what is mentioned here. Sometimes a band has two guitarist, or the singer plays guitar and sings - just like many online professionals are both the social media strategist and analytics professionals.

Each band is made up differently, as is their sound - it all has to be relevant to their unique audience so that both sides can rock out to the same tune.

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Unknown Wednesday, February 12, 2014  

SEO is NOT Dead

Alright - enough of the gloom and doom predictions, analysis, perspectives, etc.

SEO is NOT dead.

While many digital marketing experts are starting 2014 off with predictions of search engine optimization coming to an end due to Google's latest algorithm changes - it is not true. If you look at majority of blog posts and articles covering this topic, most predict the end of SEO. If not this year, soon enough.

Like all forms of marketing SEO is evolving, and to a certain extent actually remaining the same. Lets examine a few reasons why search engine optimization (or whatever you may want to label it now) is not actually "dead".

Content Marketing Was Always a Part of SEO

For everyone who keeps saying "goodbye SEO, long live content marketing" - you are part right, and part wrong. You are right due to the fact that yes, content marketing has become a more widely-acknowledged and recently adapted marketing effort. The number of infographics on the world wide web (not to mention the number of blog posts!) has skyrocketed. Videos, GIFs, animations, slides...you name it, it is out in the web and that is great news. As I am sure majority of us prefer to follow our own path to purchase enlightenment as opposed to being bombarded by paid advertising (thank goodness for Ad-Blocker extension for browsers huh?). Organizations are realizing the potential of starting conversations as opposed to mass messaging.

Image courtesy of KROMKRATHOG / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

On the flip side, you are wrong to say that this is the year of content marketing. What is content marketing? For those that started out in SEO when it just became the hot topic (at least those that knew how to properly optimize a web page) - they knew about content marketing, and importance of having a blog to share interesting content on. Not only did it provide links it also served as a way to use a human voice and reach the target audience beyond banner ads, or paid advertising. It allowed for interaction, sharing of visual content (if only limited to images a long, long time ago). Only recently has it gained traction as a popular marketing aspect of its own, but it has always been a part of a good SEO strategy.

SEO Is More Than Just Algorithms and Code

While technical aspects of a website do play a significant role in the rankings of a website, search engine optimization is much more than that. Once you finalize the technical aspect of your efforts there are lots of other features to look into. Your website has to be designed with the potential visitor in mind - not for the search engine. It needs to be adaptable to different technologies (responsive design), and most important of all - it needs to add value to a customer and the web world in general. Do you provide answers to burning questions? Do you solve problems in specific way? Do you entertain people? Give them motivation?

Image courtesy of KROMKRATHOG / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There has to be a purpose beyond keywords and trying to be "first" for a certain word that someone might search. Be helpful in a topic, in real life and online. Focus on more than solely on the technical aspects of SEO rankings - provide a complete audience experience and search engine rankings will follow.

Google Analytics Data Shows "Not Provided" - Keywords Are Therefore Extinct

Image gathered from: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/02/24/keyword-not-provided-esrc#.

Ok I will give you this one (somewhat): keywords on their own do not have the same weight as they use to. Not because the data is not available anymore, but because the new semantic algorithms, phrase focus (answering questions) and authority have shifted away from solely focusing on keywords. The focus now goes to giving authority to your web pages - authoring them to indicate a credible source, provide depth to your pages and posts to think beyond just keywords but to focus on topics (great content) that go beyond just writing spammy paragraphs stuffed full of keywords. It needs to be personal, credible and relevant.

Does this mean keywords are useless? Absolutely not - as long as there are search engines there will be keywords. Whether those keywords are written, spoken, long, short, or in a different language...they are still keywords and while it is hard to measure their success due to lack of data, it does not mean that they are irrelevant! We just have a new perspective (as does Google) on how a keyword search is defined and understood.

You can still measure SEO performance in alternative ways and turn your Google Analytics data into helpful insights by focusing on various metrics that are available.

SEO Is Branding

This is the most common misconception that business owners and marketing professionals have regarding SEO: it is NOT only a means to be first on the search engines, it is about building your brand. This means that you have to add personalization and emotion to your content, web-site, social media efforts and for that matter everything that you do on behalf of your brand. That is what separates average brands from good brands, in both traditional and digital marketing.

If you are not engaged in discussions with your potential audience members on forums, social media networks or other online venues (which of course, feeds back into SEO performance) you are focusing on just rankings. Focus on building a positive audience experience; be part of their world, engage with them, listen and participate.

Become great at creating memorable experiences, not just feeding targeted ranking data/information to search crawler bots.

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Unknown Thursday, January 30, 2014