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Utilizing The Data That Promotion Metrics Represent

Understanding promotion metrics is somewhat difficult without being in the advertising and marketing industry and receiving a bachelor’s degree in the subject.  Promotion metrics refers to the tools that allow tracking of the advertising efforts and the success at promoting the products and services.  Magic simply refers to the tools that make analyses to keep track of sweat statistics and report on the effectiveness of promotional efforts of business entities.  A more familiar type of promotional metrics might be the Nielsen boxes that are distributed throughout America.  Nielsen boxes refer to the collection of data from television users that makes up much of the statistical data that advertisers use to set rates on television commercials and advertising spots.  Promotion metrics are a simple matter to perform, as there is all manner of Web analytics software that allows the webmaster and user to perform all the necessary functions of promotion metrics optimization, the act of physically changing the content on the promoted web presence to reflect popular searches and trends in the media.

By keeping track of what is popular and what users are searching for, the webmaster can utilize the promotion metrics to provide the most targeted and most targeted search terms for the content of the commercial website or web presence.  In this way, the promotion metrics can provide extremely accurate and detailed information on the users and visitors to the webmaster’s sites and commercial web efforts and tailor the content around the needs of the users so as to provide a more comprehensive and effective resource for web surfers and consumers.

The use of promotion metrics dates back to the earliest days of newspaper circulation, when proprietors would take surveys and collect data on subscribers and readers to try to understand how better to serve their subscriber base.  This is a smart move for businesses and commercial interests, as any attempt to learn more about their customer base and what is most effective can only have positive results in the long run.

Even when these efforts are not entirely successful, their effect, when measured by promotion metrics and Web analytics software, can provide an insight into the workings and machinations of the corporate machine.  By knowing what visitors are being attracted and in what way or through what key search terms or web portals can be extremely informative and enlightening, as many times, the webmaster is not aware of exactly where the web traffic is coming from and can often be surprised by the source of new and existing ongoing traffic.  

Using promotion metrics to fully tap into this market of traffic and Web surfers, eager to find your site and spend their money, is simply a necessary choice in the highly competitive world of the commercial webmaster.  Keeping track of your website visitors is not difficult with Web analytics software that prepares statements and keeps track of your promotion metrics and assorted detailed information related to your ongoing advertising efforts.

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Choose the Right Technique for Website Analysis

One of the best ways of web marketing is to analyze the traffic that you already have in your website. Inorder to meet the expectation of the visitors of your website, you will need to get a clear idea about who is visiting your website, from where there are visiting and which page of your website they visit more. These information could be obtained by using different web traffic analysis methods that are available today. Web page counter, statistical package from ISP and Web traffic analysis systems or softwares are the main web traffic analysis techniques that are in practice today. Let’s see the difference between these techniques in the forth coming paragraphs.

The old Web Page counter

The oldest of the four web traffic analysis techniques is the ‘web page counter’. The web page counters may be either visible to the visitors also or invisible to them so that the website owners could only see the counter. These web page counters register the number of people who visit a particular page of your website. However, web page counter is a very basic approach to web traffic analysis. They are not great marketing tools for large business websites. They will be handy for personal pages.

Informational, complicated Statistical packages from ISP

If you are using a good and well known ISP, then you will be definitely having a freeware version of some popular web statistics package. These packages will create a log of every visit that your website has received. The log will be in either a webpage format or some other graphical format. Whatever format the log is, it will have some complicated coding, which has to be deciphered to see the details. However, this method does indeed provide a good amount of information about the web traffic.

Simple, wore detailed Web analytics and conversion tracking Systems:

If both of the above mentioned methods doesn’t seem suitable to you or if you wish to have a more detailed report, there are simple web analytics systems and softwares like Conversionstats available at affordable prices that will provide a broad range of analysis options. They show you which pages of your website are more popular, who is visiting your website more, which search engines are sending more visitors, which pages of your website indicate some error etc.

Unless you have all this information, it is really hard to meet the expectation of the customers who visit your website.

The Author writes articles on website analytics. For more information about conversion tracking, sales and return on investment please visit his site at http://www.conversionstats.com


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Having A Website Is Not A Web Strategy

“I have a website, now what? I really don’t understand what my website should be doing for me.” This statement, from a successful manufacturing company owner, was made during a recent “Introduction to Web Marketing” seminar held by The Net Impact. “I know it’s up there and I’m proud of it I guess, but what is your website supposed to do for you?” This comment caused a lot of conversation in the room and opened the floodgates to similar comments.


“I have a website.” another business owner said, “I just don’t know if its bringing me leads or not.” Another person joined in with, “I seem to be slipping in the rankings as well and I’m not doing anything different. I think this is affecting my lead flow. What can I do about it?”


How many firms have the same questions? From this encounter and similar concerns raised in other seminars, I would have to say quite a few. Most firms we see at our seminars have a website that is three to five years old. Many times this is a second or even third generation site that replaced an older or original site. Interestingly enough, the most often cited reasons for these “next generation” website efforts usually have nothing to do with marketing! Business owners in many cases dramatically change their website or build it all over again mainly because of a change in their core business or because they simply don’t like their old site. With the notable exception of e-commerce sites, sales and lead flow had little to do with their reasons for the creation of a new site or their selection of the web development firm that produced it.


Website cost vs. website return on investment


Many businesses are mistakenly more concerned about the “cost” in building their new site than they are in how they will maximize their ROI from the site after it’s online. The reason behind this is pretty basic. It is almost always easier to control a checking account than it is to develop an effective revenue strategy. Thankfully this, “I got a deal.” approach to evaluating the value of a website has been changing to, “I made a good investment.” Increasingly firms are understanding that their website should perform, it should generate revenue and thus be considered a business expense rather than simply a one-time outlay of capital.


Over the past two years we have increasingly heard concerns about a site’s marketing impact, lead flow and search engine placement. Why? The old standby methods of generating business and their primary approach to advertising for many of these firms; direct mail, print media and yellow pages ads, are rising in cost while at the same time they decline in effectiveness. Business owners now more than ever realize that their website holds great potential and performance is a necessity. Yet most firms simply put, have a website and are now realizing they need a web strategy! We see this changing environment regularly in our seminars. The main questions business owners ask us as they start to re-evaluate their web approach are:


1) What is my website supposed to be doing for me?


2) How can I tell if it is doing this (in example: providing leads)?


3) What needs to be in place to measure results?


4) What efforts are required to improve performance?


5) How do I determine my return on the investment I have made in my site?


These are all great and common questions that reflect symptoms of not having identified a strong web strategy. In these next few posts we will address these questions starting with, “What is my website supposed to be doing for me?” This leads us into a discussion of differing web strategies.


Determining your “Web Strategy”


Deciding the desired functionality for your website and thus the major part of your web strategy can be challenging. There can be an irresistible urge to “keep up with the Joneses”. Some firms create sites that are way over the top and overly developed way beyond what are really their genuine online business requirements. Like office space, an elaborate and expensive website is not always a guarantee of success. We urge clients not to let corporate ego or peer pressure determine their approach to the web. At the same time, without advance planning and market awareness, an underdeveloped site will cost you business and stature. As in most strategic planning, it is best to start with the end in mind.


What do you want your website to do? Not really that tough a question, the tougher question is how to accomplish that.


Today we will start with a most basic use for your site:


Is your web strategy fairly simple? Do you just need your website to reinforce your business card?


You are of course aware that after an introduction at a conference or frequently even prior to a sales call, many prospects will call up your website to learn more about you and your organization. If your business is face-to-face, your approach is personal and your market local, then your website may need to do no more than provide a source of information supportive to the “elevator pitch” you just delivered to that new acquaintance or prospect from the conference or other chance meeting. A site built for this purpose should be simple and informative but also should be authoritative for the decision maker you are about to approach with an idea or service.


If this describes your business, then following these guidelines may be enough.


* Keep the information simple – viewers want information about you and your services. They will go elsewhere for the weather, time, entertainment, inspirational messages or stock quotes. Give them exactly what they want.

* Keep the design basic – no one wants to see marching monkeys, flashing pictures or burning logos. Just because your developer can do something clever, is not a good reason to do that something clever.

* Keep the site current – information must be accurate and up-to-date. As importantly, feature your contact information, phone number included, prominently on the site. Don’t make prospects dig deep to find out how to talk to you. Also, it is very inexpensive, even free, to have an email service provider on board to provide that important stan@stantheexpert vs. stantheexpert@hotmail or other less impressive email address. And for all of our sakes, watch it with cutesy email addresses. You really don’t want to be remembered as ladiesman@yahoo or something similarly distracting do you?

* Make sure your site works – How does your site look in Firefox, IE7, Safari or on an iPhone? Do your links work? Is your “contact us” form in good working order? Simple, up-to-date and functional are the basics.

* Don’t be afraid to be authoritative – are you an expert? Tell us! Publish this on your site. “What do you know and how will it help me?” is a question that needs to be answered for a viewer.

* Use web analytics tools – even a simple site should be measured for effectiveness. What pages do viewers visit? How long are they on the site? Where do they come from? All good things to know.


This simple, user-friendly, authority site need not be overly expensive. If you stay local and do not need the search engines to bring traffic to your site, you can make periodic changes to the site as needed for very little expense.


So, let’s put this strategy to the five question test above.


1) What is my website supposed to be doing for me?

In this basic case, represent my business in a professional and authoritative manner for prospects and partners who check us out online! Provide easy to find contact information.


2) How can I tell if it is doing this (in example: show credibility)?

Be proud of your site! Ask clients and prospects if they have seen your site. Did they find the information useful? Make your site the springboard for a face-to-face description of products and services.


3) What needs to be in place to measure results?

A simple web analytics tool like Google Analytics can be quickly installed for free. Though far from perfect, it will give you general information about your traffic and visitors. It also has great help screens.


4) What efforts are required to improve performance?

In this case, very little. Make sure your information is accurate and up-to-date. Keep articles and information on services topical and current.


5) How do I determine the return on my website investment?

It is hard to totally evaluate the return in this case on a minimal web investment since you are not trying to generate leads just as it is complicated to determine the cost of not having a website. Prospects and partners want to find out about your business online. The site then should give you peace of mind that your firm, regardless of size, is well represented online for referrals, prospects and recruiting. Use your online information as a springboard for launching into a sales meeting.


In this most basic web strategy, follow the steps we discussed above and your website will represent you in the simple, professional and authoritative manner you really need in order to support your face to face client meetings and close those sales!

Steve Thomas is President of The Net Impact, a Web Design Firm and writes regularly on SEO, Web Development and Internet marketing related topics. He can be contacted at stthomas@thenetimpact.com.


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How To Understand Web Traffic

A website without traffic will not succeed. It is equally crucial to a web master as the location of a property, is to real estate. Website traffic can come from many different sources on the Internet, Articles,blogs, forums, email, partner websites and search engines.

Web site traffic reporting and analytics are essential for any on line business. Web traffic is the amount of visitors that go to a web site. This measures the popularity of site and individual pages or sections of a Web Site. Web traffic can be analyzed by viewing the traffic statistics found in the web server log file, it automatically-generates a list. Web sites like Alexa Internet generate traffic rankings and statistics based on those people who access the sites while using the Alexa tool. Google, for instance, by the close of 2004 had indexed in excess of eight billion pages. Google Analytics is an enterprises web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Google Information for Web masters indicates that the number of sites linking to a specific website address is the most important factor that determines what sites Google indexes.

Web traffic can be increased by submitting a site to search engines. Additional methods to increase visits is to purchase advertising, such as, bulk e-mail, and classified advertising. Web traffic can also be increased by purchasing off line advertising. Free traffic that come from search engines or article directories is call “organic”. Web masters who would like free traffic will trade links with other web masters. More traffic means more visitors to your site and more sales profits. Links multiply your your site relevance and drive quality traffic to it.

Search engine optimization (SEO) deals with the order in which web pages are ranked when keywords or phrases are typed into search engines. Searching the internet gives you the opportunity to check many different companies to see what they have to offer. Search engines love content and information articles and many people will read and link to articles that are interesting and informative for topics they are interested in.

Search Engine Optimization is one of your most important traffic building strategies. Search engines bring exposure, more viewers and customers to your business. Search engines are also the least costly way to market your business, products and services.

I am interested in affiliate marketing and sharing my research and knowledge with others. I always have been amazed with the communication process, especially through the penning of creative thoughts on paper. http://www.affiliateproview.com


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Does your Web Host Support your Online Marketing Initiatives?

Most online entrepreneurs opt for a Web host primarily on the basis of the recommendation given by their web services company. In making your decision, you should ensure that the choice of your host does not have a negative impact on your interactive marketing strategies.

 

So, how do you make your choice? One of the most crucial factors that you should consider is the tools and services that the web host supports or doesn’t support. Find out what kind of statistics or web analytics services the host offers. A number of small-time web hosting companies offer freeware statistics in the name of analytics services; which means, you will have to pay a third party to get the desired package and data for your website. But, a good hosting company always has strategic relationships with some of the best web analytics vendors who can provide their customers with some powerful website analysis tools as part of their hosting packages.

 

If you are an ecommerce company, your web host has a key role to play in the successful functioning of your applications. Many hosting companies provide ecommerce software with their package. You have to find out if you will be able to sell your products online using the solution they are offering. If not, at least ensure that the web host will support the ecommerce solution of your choice, because many such applications require specialized installations.

 

If you want to carry out online marketing activities extensively, you would need a consistent and reliable email delivery system. It is therefore critical for you to make sure that your web host is able to powerfully fight spammers and filter your important mails on time. There have been numerous instances where emails generated from IP ranges or particular hosting companies have gotten blocked, because they do not follow a strict anti-spamming policy. This can have disastrous impact on your online marketing campaign.

 

Another very critical issue that you have to address if the server uptime guaranteed by your web host. While being down for a few minutes here and there does have a negative impact on your web business, the real impact is felt if there is significant downtime. Your site not being available online for hours on end leads to significant revenue loss and tarnishes the image of your company. Therefore, when you sign up with a website hosting company, make sure you get a guaranteed 99.9% uptime.

 

Choosing a hosting company is more complicated than doing a comparative analysis of features such as disk space, bandwidth and price. Your decision will have a major impact on your Internet marketing initiatives. Therefore, go for a reliable web hosting company like Aussie Web Host, the premier name in website hosting in Australia.

For more information related to Web Hosting, Cheap Web Hosting, Website Hosting, Web Host, Domain Name Registration, Domain Name please visit: http://www.aussiewebhost.com.au/


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For great web hosting: www.hostjackpot.com Here we go over the basics of Woopra, one of the newest analytics options available for webmasters. Woopra will show you every little detail about what is going on behind the scenes of your web site. Unique visits, page views, where visitors are coming from, and so much more. Also it comes with a “Live” feature, which will show you the number of users currently on your website, live in real time. You can also start a chat with users on your web site using Woopra. I suggest you check it out. It is a pretty awesome analytics software.

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Online Marketing Works, But our Web Sites Don?t?

The Internet is the world’s biggest marketplace, allowing both buyers and sellers unprecedented access, flexibility and capability to scale the business of buying and selling. Not surprisingly, the amount of money being spent in online business initiatives is consistently registering greater heights. A joint report by The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP shows that Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. continued upward—totaling .9 billion in 2006—exceeding spending in 2005 by 35%! eMarketer predicts that this number will go up to .4 billion by 2010. These astronomical figures highlight increasing significance of Internet and its ability to help firms progressively generate more revenues.

With the size of online retail sales crossing 0 billion in 2006 in the US alone, it is no surprise that Web sites have moved into the center stage for all business activities—in fact, 210 million Americans are slated to go online in 2007. From corporate communication to branding, from lead generation to lead nurturing – the Website has become the most influential and visible touch point. Accordingly, businesses have been busy discovering and harnessing new communication channels like banners, blogs, Microsites, portals, product brochures, pay-per-click online campaigns, and search engine marketing.

Hollywood Store Fronts: Are your content changes lagging behind real time?

On the Universal Studios Tram Tour, the guide will tell you that most of the sets you come across are facades, giving the illusion that there actually is more to what you see. They are also, in a sense, for public use. Similarly, in a world where information changes rapidly, Web sites need to be constantly updated and continuously monitored. Static content cannot not hold users or search engines alike. Wouldn’t you care if customers motored past your sloppy Website—like one of these decaying fronts—on route to your competitor?

The sheer variety of delivery channels gives marketers multiple options to choose from. However, it is also a nightmare if these delivery channels do not complement each other. Like modern banking that have multiple delivery channels to deliver services to a customer, they must manage their services for the telephone, Web, POS or the ATM. Effective communication from a Website can only happen if different pieces of the content landscape such as banner ads, blogs, online communities or pay per click ads work in tandem with each other to engage users effectively.

Similarly, for measuring the success of online initiatives, organizations have to understand and integrate multiple technology tools cohesively for tangible results. For example, you may have Web analytics software that gives you the details about the most popular sections in your site, a CRM application that gives a complete picture about your customer, and e-mail marketing software that blasts out customized mails to selected list of people who have visited or downloaded content from your site. Most organizations see these initiatives as silos of information, and invariably fail to exploit the potential.

So the challenges are multifold. These include continuously updating content, integrating with backend CRM or Web analytics software, ensuring personalization of content according to user types, and leveraging newer concepts such as Wikis, blogs, RSS feeds and everything else Web 2.0.

Changing gears into overdrive

Well managed content can make your marketing campaigns rock. For this to happen, your Website needs to have the ability to perform the following functions:

• Deliver content relevant to your online marketing campaigns

• Ensure brand consistency across various content channels

• Improve brand visibility through increase in quality Website visitors

• Convert Website visitors into qualified leads with appropriate content

• Track effectiveness of marketing campaigns using appropriate tools and technologies.

• Easily update your Web sites based on user feedback

To acquire such capabilities, organizations are obligated to make their Web sites more interactive, relevant and search engine friendly. This is extremely significant as a Web site with inappropriately tagged content or a few missing links can turn away prospective customers and deliver them into the hands of the competition in a matter of few seconds.

Content is paramount to online consumers—far more than search. A recent study by Online Publisher Association (OPA) found that consumers are now spending 47% of their time (up from 34% in 2003) on content as compared to 5% on search. This clearly underlines the importance of customizing the content, and continually keeping it fresh and meaningful.

Manual configuration and content updating on the Web site can take a long time, be prone to errors and can be messy if it involves integration with multiple systems such as a campaign management or a CRM system. Further, as content management involves a host of tasks including usability, design, and information architecture¬¬¬–most organizations find it extremely challenging to put out a Web site that reflects the dynamic needs of the business.

Take a breather! Help is on the way

Web content management systems have emerged to address precisely these requirements. Armed with this tool, an organization can take end-to-end responsibility for streamlining the process of managing and publishing digital content to remove a major impediment in the success of their online marketing programs.

Some key benefits that a Website content management system can deliver are:

• Content as you need, when you need: Your marketing programs need content specifically tailored to the needs of the campaigns. A Web CMS lets you create new landing pages and Microsites on the fly as well as update existing content just as easily.

• Brand Consistency: Website CMS ensure brand consistency across a company’s Web site so that branding and design are controlled to the level desired (style sheets, templates, etc.), regardless of who is responsible for the actual content.

• Improving visibility: Organizations who focus on giving non technical subject matter experts tools that are simple to use, will succeed. Content specialists can focus on creating content and not worry about formatting changes. Website visibility can be considerably improved using search engine optimization techniques. Organizations can use a Web CMS to write search engine friendly URL’s, optimize their directory structure, create individual title and meta tags per page – which when used in combination with each other can significantly improve ranking of a Web site in search engines, as well enhance the usability of Web pages.

• Measuring effectiveness: Centralization allows organizations to measure the performance for different sections of the Web site more effectively. Further, seamless integration with Web Analytics or CRM software means that organizations do not have a disconnected view of their digital assets. Key performance indicators can be set and measured, campaigns can be tracked automatically, and leads can be followed up to closure.

• Ensuring quality and freshness of content: A Web content management system incorporates intelligent workflow automation, ensuring that content passes through appropriate quality gates before being published. Additionally, completely configurable workflows enable organizations to assign tasks to any person, and are scaled when defined thresholds are crossed. For example, e-mail alerts can be sent to content owners of specific sections on a Web site when these sections don’t get updated after a specific time period. This is difficult to do in a manual system.

Icing on the cake…the SaaS way

The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model magnifies the benefit brought in by Web CMS by sparing organizations the high cost of purchasing, installing and customizing enterprise software. As the software is hosted, there is no hardware to buy and no software to install and no infrastructure to manage. The user organization just pays on a fixed monthly or quarterly fee and leaves the task of managing, maintaining and upgrading the software to the service provider.

Organizations save costs as they do not have to invest in resources like templates, actual coding, or a Webmaster that takes care of hosting. By using a SaaS model, organizations can also cut down on their risk, and choose different functionalities as they grow. Further, as billing is on a monthly or quarterly basis, costs are spread across the lifetime of a product’s usage. This is an extremely attractive value proposition when compared to the traditional software model, where costs are paid upfront and the risk of product implementation and adoption is totally on the customer.

In a recent study of support calls over the last 3 years 91% of support requests are unrelated to software. They consist of requests for input and output template edits, config changes, workflow revisions and training. This means that only 9% of your calls to a traditional software vendor for bug fixes and actual software issues will actually result in any assistance on their end without a professional services engagement of some sort, or contacting your system integrator, or Web agency. The reason for this is that the hard part of any CMS implementation doesn’t begin until after the Web site goes live and you actually start using the CMS. This is why players like CrownPeak are providing Lifelong Active Support. This takes the “Services” in Software-as-a-Service to a whole new level with a dedicated account manager for the lifetime of the service, who is the same person who actually implements the CMS for your site, as part of your monthly cost. They are there to answer any question you have about the CMS and how you use it in your organization as well as provide strategic services for Search Engine Optimization, integrations and how you can actually measure the ROI of your CMS.

All this result in a sweeter ROI for businesses who employ SaaS delivered Website CMS to manage their content. Businesses are becoming savvy and demand increasing ROI from their marketing programs. A Web CMS that can deliver superior results at a much lower total cost of ownership (TCO) will fall right in the sweet spot.

Harness the power of your Web site

In order to succeed, organizations try to keep pace with the speed at which business and technology trends are moving. A Website CMS seeks to addresses most of their content challenges by providing a holistic approach for managing and executing content management strategies. By using a Web CMS, businesses can gain real time capability into understanding and measuring results of the marketing campaigns. They can realize significant ROI by injecting these insights into their Web sites to turn them into even more powerful marketing assets.

This article is contributed by Rob Rose – Vice President of Crownpeak. In order to succeed, organizations try to keep pace with the speed at which business and technology trends are moving. A Website CMS seeks to addresses most of their content challenges by providing a holistic approach for managing and executing content management strategies. By using a Web CMS, businesses can gain real time capability into understanding and measuring results of the marketing campaigns. They can realize significant ROI by injecting these insights into their Web sites to turn them into even more powerful marketing assets.


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Developing Your Audience With a Content Management System

 

For consistency, you need a system that has the ability to centralize content and deliver it to multiple information sources, everything from campaigns, direct e-mail newsletters and podcasts to advertisements, and each piece of content must deliver a single consistent message.

While one key characteristic of the Internet is speed, another equal characteristic is usability. A Web site must be visually appealing and simple to navigate and use. Parameters such as Web site design, landing pages and context-related content are absolutely critical for attracting visitors.

Measuring the Success of Your Online Initiatives

A competitive economy always demands more value for every dollar spent. While the opportunities that can be explored via an online medium are immense, so are the challenges.

As seen in most organizations, e-marketing strategies are disconnected from each other and exist as islands of information. So, you may have analytics software that gives you the details about the most popular sections in your Web site, a CRM application that creates a complete picture about your customer, and email marketing software that sends out customized mails to selected lists of people who have visited or downloaded content from your site. To top that, you have new mediums such as blogs and podcasts adding to the content mix. You may also have explored different mediums such as buying ad space on popular Web sites, or placing syndicated content such as white papers or Webcasts on specialized Web sites such as Bitpipe or Knowledgestorm.

Now, unless these different pieces of the content landscape are connected and integrated with each other, the ROI of such initiatives will remain unclear. For instance, can you tell if a particular white paper has contributed to a sale, or which particular campaign is helping you convert leads into wins?

To measure the success of an online strategy, you must have an integrated mechanism that enables your organization to track the success at a micro as well as at a macro level.

How Can a CMS help?

If quality of content, ease of publishing, and making your Web site search engine friendly are critical success factors, then a Content Management System (CMS) scores on all counts. A CMS is a tool that eases the creation, maintenance and management of a Web site.


Listed below are a few factors that show how a CMS can help you build a good quality Web site, while ensuring that your Internet audience keeps on growing

· Boosting Search Engine Rankings


If the world of meta tags, anchor text, and keyword density make you feel that search engine optimization (SEO) is rocket science, a CMS can demystify SEO techniques and give business owners the power to fully make their Web sites search engine friendly. A CMS can also help non-technical people create page titles, URLs and meta tags while also suggesting keywords that would make sense to spiders crawling the Web site.

· Creating a Good Navigation Structure


Just as human beings like being given directions, search engine spiders too are fond of Web sites that have good structure and make finding content an easy task. A CMS can automatically create navigation paths, helping search engines go deep into Web sites to find and index relevant content. The more Web pages search engines find, the greater are the chances of the Web site being ranked higher.

A CMS can also enable organizations to maintain W3C compliance for enabling a good structure for their Web sites. The W3C stands for the World Wide Web Consortium and provides the guidelines by which Web sites and Web pages should be structured and created. Compliance helps insure that your Web site functions the same when accessed from any browser or device. It also ensures that proper use of standards which in turn, helps search engines interpret content easily. Further, CMS help create a comprehensive sitemap which ensures that search engines can follow and index each link.

· Improving the Speed and Ease of Publishing Content


Organizations can accelerate their speed of publishing content by giving subject matter experts tools that simple, and intuitive to use. And when you have good quality content being updated regularly, it is a matter of time before the Internet audience takes note of your organization’s efforts.


· Improved Web site Searchability


Since a Web site CMS manages all content consistently, built-in search engines make finding content on a Web site fast and easy.

· Improved Measurability


When you integrate the CMS with your CRM or Sales Force applications, the chances of success increase exponentially. For example, detailed information about the surfing habits of your buyers, or preferences selected during choosing newsletters, can be used by the CRM system to deliver targeted, customized offers to prospective customers.

Similarly, integration between the CMS and email marketing software can allow marketers to create campaigns using the CMS, and launch them using the email marketing software. Registrations, enquiries and user feedback can be automatically captured, and analyzed further using an analytics tool.

As you can see, this gives marketers a closed-loop lead generation tool – tracking buyer habits from surfing by using Web analytics tools, providing one view of the customer through the CRM, and then capturing the feedback and improving it further by analyzing the results of the campaign. Besides the ability to track the leads to the sales, an integrated system gives organizations the ability to track effectiveness of campaigns, with an accurate analysis of data for predicting current and future market trends. These statistics can be used by organizations to enhance their e-marketing strategies, and fine tune the methods to attract the users they want.

The Hosted Advantage

If you opt for a CMS delivered using a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, the benefits get amplified. You have no hassles of managing hardware or purchasing software – all you do is rent the software from the service provider. As a customer, you just pay a fixed subscription fee on a monthly or quarterly basis and leave the task of managing, maintaining and upgrading the software to the vendor.

Organizations also save costs as they do not have to budget for a developer who tweaks the HTML code, or a Webmaster who actually takes care of hosting. Some SaaS players even provide a dedicated account manager with an escalation path for support. By using a SaaS model, organizations can also cut down on their risk and choose different functionalities as they grow.

Further, as billing is on a monthly or quarterly basis, costs are spread across the lifetime of a product’s usage. This is an extremely attractive value proposition when compared to the traditional software model, where costs are paid upfront and the risk of product implementation and adoption is totally on the customer.


For more info: http://www.crownpeak.com


 

This article is contributed by Rob Rose – Vice President of CrownPeak. CrownPeak offers a cost effective and user friendly Content Management System (CMS).

http://www.crownpeak.com


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Seattle Web Development and Seattle Web Design Companies

There are many Seattle businesses that are increasing their sales by taking their businesses online. These businesses have gone to Seattle web development companies which have developed them websites. You too will need to hire a Seattle web design company if you wish to follow in their footsteps and increase your sells by building a web presence for your business or company. There are a number of Seattle web design companies to choose from. With so many different choices it can be very difficult to choose a good Seattle web development company. This article will discuss some of the things that you should look at when choosing a company.

 

There are a number of things that you should look when trying to choose a good Seattle web design company. You should first look at your own needs and think about what you need and want on your website. If you are interested in selling products or services on your website then you’ll want to invest in e-commerce applications. It is also a good idea to think about how much traffic is going to be coming to your website and how much disk space you’ll need to host your website. Those who are wishing to sell products on their website will want to invest in a shopping cart application which allows customers to easily add and remove items from the shopping cart.

 

It is extremely important for all websites to be search engine optimized. Therefore, you’ll want to choose a Seattle web development company that insures that the websites that they build and develop are search engine optimized. Search engine optimization will help increase the number of hits that your website receives each and every month. You should find a Seattle web design company that also offers web analytics. Web Analytics is software that is used to determine how well a search engine optimization campaign is working. Web analytics will allow you to gain a better understanding and more knowledge of your site visitors.

 

There are a number of things that you should take into consideration when choosing a Seattle web development company. It is a good idea to choose a Seattle web design company that offers web site hosting. You’ll want to choose a Seattle web development company that offers hosting with a high uptime percentage. Make sure that you choose a hosting company that has an uptime percentage of 99.9. It is also a good idea to find a company that offers unlimited bandwidth and disk space. The more bandwidth you have will allow you to have more traffic coming to your website per month.

 

It is a good idea to choose a Seattle web design company that offers e-commerce solutions. Anyone who wishes to sell products on their website will want to choose a Seattle web development company that offers e-commerce applications. It is a good idea to find a company that can develop you a shopping cart system that allows customers to easily and quickly remove and add products to their shopping cart. Customers should be able to check out easily and safely using a secure payment gateway. It is also a good idea find applications that allow you to update products with ease.

Are you thinking about taking your business online and are searching for a Seattle Web Development company? Kaiso Solutions is a Seattle web design company that offers web analytics, search engine optimization and hosting solutions.


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Jon Horn, president of JMH Consulting and Director of Professional Programs at Emory’s Center for Lifelong Learning, gives an in-depth lecture about web analytics. For more information, visit www.cll.emory.edu/

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Simple SEO Tips for Bloggers

Looking for ways to increase the traffic to your blog? Here are a few simple SEO (search engine optimization) tips for newcomers to blogging. These, if implemented properly,
will ensure an increase in the number of visitors to your blog, which can lead to a higher revenue.

Using the Right Keywords

 

Using the right keywords is a vital element of SEO for any website. You will have to spend some time doing research and then choose the ideal keywords suited to your blog theme and content. Make sure that you use these keywords in titles and in your blog posts. But don’t just stuff them in. Use them sparingly and remember to spread them out. Optimum use of keywords in your blog makes it a simpler task for search engines to associate your blog to those keywords.

Creating a Sitemap

Creating a sitemap for your blog will ensure that search engines index each of your blog posts and pages. If you don’t use a sitemap, some of your blog content may not be found by search spiders.

Build links

 

Building both internal and external links is one of the key aspects of offsite SEO. Your internal links should not be grouped together in one place. Spreading them out not only looks better, but makes it easier for search engines to pick the data they are looking for.

 

Increase your site’s popularity on the internet. Website popularity is determined by both the number of websites that link to your blog and the quality of those sites. Make sure you are not getting a lot of suspicious websites linking to your blog. Having just a few links from good quality sites is worth much more than numerous low quality ones.

Minimize flash content


Minimize Flash objects on your blog. Search engines do not handle Flash objects well. If you must have banners, use static banners instead.

 

Update regularly

Update your blog on a regular basis. From time to time, add fresh posts and pages. This prevents your blog from looking static to search engines, which will reduce spider visits to your site.

 

Use web analytics

 

Web analytics are software tools that help analyze traffic to your blog. By using these tools, you can effectively tweak the way your blog is optimized for search engines. There are many free web analytics solutions available online. All it needs is ten minutes a day to check your progress and get an idea of the areas that you need to concentrate more on.

You can easily set up an analytics tool on your blog. Some of the top programs include Google Analytics, Statcounter, Onestat, iWebtrack, and Clicktale. Some of these are free and you’ll have to pay for the others. Read reviews on these tools and choose one that appeals to you and is affordable.

These are just some simple SEO methods you can use to increase you blog’s popularity and page rank. Besides these, make sure that you have quality content in your blog posts, as this is what will bring you repeat visitors.

Patrick Le May is an internet marketing expert, who writes articles on social media marketing, online marketing and SEO services.


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Considered Website Design and Seo

At some point you have considered website design and SEO. You may have even tried to design your own website with applying SEO and not reached the effect you hoped to obtain. Like many other online website design and marketing techniques, website design and SEO together can and does work, by applying yourself and comprehending which keywords your website is being found with, for more detail go to:www.the20seotools.com. by keeping familiar of tendencies in the industry and responding to them. With some fundamental awareness that you have previously been missing, you can open the avenues to new and exciting openings for profits that you have been absent from.

Website Design Plus Website Analytics Plus SEO Equals Online Success! Let’s begin with the presumption that you want more visitors to your website, to effectively grow your business. With 86.7% of Internet users using search engines to find websites [Enquire Search Study] it’s apparent that your website has to come up high in the search engines rankings, so you can get your piece if not most of those potential customers. There is more additional information than just

Getting your website a high ranking and implementing Analytics to your group of tools is what will help you get the most out of not only your website design and SEO tactics, but ALL your online marketing crusades.

Analytics, as distinct by Wikipedia is the measurable extent of the actions of visitors to a website. In a commercial view, it non-specifically refers to the measure of which components of the website work towards the business goals; for instance, which pages stimulate visitors your purchase of your website.

There are an immense number of uses for website analytics. Website owners can use it to estimate website function and navigation as well as measuring customer interest in different advertisements and marketing campaigns, or it could be used to construct replication of the “whole picture” for more detail go to:www.offline-promotion.com. of your website’s lucrative gains. We want to center our attention on website analytics for website design and SEO goals in this article.

Good keyword phrases are more competitive today than ever, it takes more work to drive traffic to your site, and once you do you have to quickly obtain the interest of your visitors. Those visitors are very valuable and are the result of significant SEO efforts.

Therefore, it is critical to understand how visitors got to your site (which engines are driving traffic and which keywords), and even more critical to discover what they do once they get there. You need web Analytics reporting to tell you when and where people are leaving your site, where they are spending their time and much more.

Whether you currently have a website and are running an SEO campaign, and simply need to add Analytics, or whether you are looking to start SEO and a new web design, now is the time to take action.

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