This is the first post in a new blog series I am doing geared toward helping those who use web marketing to succeed in their efforts.  I encourage you to leave your comments and tweet it as you see fit and hopefully, we can all learn something new.

So what is the key to a great web marketing campaign?  Some would say the delivery of the message is the key.  Others would say it is the platform.  Both of these are great answers and very important to the success of a web marketing campaign but ultimately, what makes a web marketing campaign a success is the website your potential customers are sent to.  More explanation below…

Make sure the target website converts.

For any web marketing campaign to be successful, the website you send visitors to must convert.  Sadly, you can throw all the visitors you want at a website that doesn’t convert and still be in the same situation you started in only with less money, more frustration and more visitors that are not doing what you want them to do.

That being said, it is extremely important that you make sure your website works the way it is supposed to and does what it is meant to do.  I realize that all websites are not about getting people to buy something but they are meant to get visitors to do something, be it read the posts, click on ads, sign up for services, etc.  If thewebsite does not serve this purpose, web marketing will ultimately fail to do what it is supposed to do.

To play the other side of the story, some web marketers would argue that the purpose of web marketing is to get people to the intended site and the job is done.  Honestly though, what is the point of doing the markeeting if the site doesn’t convert.  Yes the web marketing is complete and working, because people are visiting, but what is the value for our client if we get 1o,000 visitors to our client’s site and none of them take the intended action on the site?  The value is none.  This is a shoddy client experience and honestly, if I were the client, my web marketer would be replaced, quick-like.

Testing if the website converts.

There is a quick and dirty way to see if your website is converting already and it involves comparing your record of desired actions taken (such as sales numbers, ad click numbers, etc.) for 2 months and your website analytics for 2 months.  I suggest comparing 2 months of numbers so you can rule out 1 month being a fluke if your numbers are crazy.  Granted, it does take a bit of work to get to the results, but compared to a full-on marketing analysis, this should be pretty cake.

To get a good idea of whether your website converts, compare the number of actions you want completed on the site (such as product sales or ad clicks) to the # of visitors that you get per day.  Using this data, you will be able to see, over the course of 2 months, whether your site converted or not, what your conversion ratio was (both on a daily and monthly basis), and also the days when your site converted the most and the least.  Using this information, you can get a better idea of whether or not it would be beneficial to spend the money to get more visitors.  If your conversion ratio is low and your visitor count is low, I suggest you consider having your website reviewed (and possibly revamped) to improve it’s conversion, before considering additional web marketing actions.  If your visitor count is low and your conversion ratio is high, your website will likely see even more success with a targeted web marketing campaign.

Wrapping it up.

Ultimately, we all expect a return on the things we invest in and in the true spirit of your website being an investment, I hope that this post has provided you with a tool and some insight into how to get on the right track with it.  If you have any questions about web marketing, websites or anything else in this post, please feel free to contact me, as I would love to discuss it more with you.  Also, feel free to leave your comments below and let me know your web marketing story.

For an incredibly in-depth marketing analysis, in which we will take this method and expand it to gain even more insight into the results your website is producing, please contact me and request a free consultation.

Thank you for reading and stay tuned for the next post in my Web Marketing Success Tips series.

Website analytics…a marketers’ boon and holder of a wealth of information.  But what makes them good?  A whole lotta things and we will cover a few of them in depth in the paragraphs to come.  In the past we did a general overview of why website analytics were so important to businesses that had a presence online and we would like to offer a review of a free website analytics tracker that is both fun to use and very informative: GoingUp.com.

General Overview:

Snazzy colors, easy sign up, multiple implentation choices (types of code you insert into your site code to start tracking), and a great looking and informative UI, make this website analytics choice very promising.  The presentation of information is logically sound and almost all ajax driven, which makes for a nice look and feel overall.  Information tracked is extensive and coupled with graphs, charts and maps, the information is easy to comprehend and use.

Other things of notice:

• Multiple websites can be tracked with one free account
• Many choices regarding how info is displayed and what info is displayed
• Bulk Domain Analyzer (allows you to compare the Alexa page rank and Google page rank of multiple domains)
• SEO and Ranking tools (very helpful in determining SEO stats for comparison)

Information gathering:

GoingUp.com collects information regularly from the sites you include in your account.  They are rarely real-time though so make sure to account for how old the info is when doing comparisons to other marketing info.  Information gathered is pretty standard info: visitor count, visitor time on website, visitor locations (city), visitor operating system, visitor internet connection speed, etc.  This info is pretty standard for analytics and there is quite a bit of it. GoingUp.com uses tabs and menus to divide out the info which can be somewhat confusing.  Their information layout though is pretty easy to work with and that is what makes this anaytics option shine.

Website Performance:

So far GoingUp.com‘s service has not really affected my site load time.  The only complaint I have is that while the page is loading (for the first time) it has a small advertising link that shows up at the top of the page.  It is there for all of about 1/2 a second or so, depending on the connection, but I did notice it.

The Interface:

As mentioned before, the interface offers alot as far as ease of use and eye-candy are concerned.  With bright bold colors and many ajax affects, it looks great and is fun to use.  One thing to consider, it does take a zippy connection to get the full benefit of the analytics info GoingUp.com gives you.  This is mainly because of all of the ajax loads and the sheer amount of information loading at one time in the UI.  If you don’t have a fast internet connection, it can get downright annoying waiting for the GoingUp.com’s UI to load up.

Ending Thoughts

Overall, I likey.  The information presented is useful and presented in a way that makes it less boring to interact with.  With many options for changes in how information is displayed, you can bet that you will find a configuration to make you happy.  The perks are numerous with the SEO tools that are easy to use and pretty quick in their analysis of submitted pages, tips for improving SEO for sites that are registered in the system and the wealth of information that analytics offer in the first place.  The only thing I didn’t like about GoingUp.com was the load time of the backend UI with a less than optimal internet connection.  If you have a speedy connect and you want great analytics info at your fingertips, feel free to check out GoingUp.com.

Please feel free to leave your comments, suggestions, rants and raves by submitting a comment to this post.

Thank you and as always, for help with all of your web needs (websites, marketing, search engine optimization)  always think of Big Cloud Media.

Big Cloud Media

Return on Investment. It’s what we are in business for and ultimately, what we expect out of our investments at the end of the day.  So why not expect the same out of our online investments, such as our websites and online marketing efforts? The Return on the Online Investment is often ignored in the rush to achieve online web presence and to start establishing a basis for being found online.  What represents your business online?  Your website does and it does a fine job of it.  Is it sending the right message though?  If you send 10,000 people there will it result in sales?  If it is not selling your product or bringing in more customers now, it probably wouldn’t do so with a crazy increase in traffic.  Unless you know where you are at, with your website, you can’t hope to get where you are going (except by luck maybe).  Knowing the return you currently get on your website is the stepping stone to planning what you would like to have as the return on your website and how to get there.  I hate to say it but if your business website is yielding no return (either in clients or sales) than something must be done because you have wasted money or time and your potential biggest asset is not doing the job it should be. It is time to get back to the nitty gritty of what your online purpose is.  This is the new focus of Big Cloud Media as a web-design and development / marketing company.  Get back to the roots of why businesses are online in the first place and re-engineer the experience and the presence to maximize and reach that reason.  Through a unique combination of website analytics analysis and the analysis of both online and offline marketing, we can establish what works and what doesn’t, where the problems are and where the excellence lies, and ultimately, where the money has been spent and where it needs to be spent, in order to get the greatest ROI. A business’s online presence is an investment.  Plain and simple.  It can also be the most awesome marketing / sales tool, ever, if done correctly.  Think of it as an extension of your business to the masses that have never heard of you or met you.  You can communicate through it to your customers and potential clients.  You can customize the user experience to maximize the comfort and ease of use for your customers.  It can be used at all hours at any time of day and the space is yours to do with what you please.  You build it, nurture it, keep it in good shape and it will, in one way or another, continually return the money put into it.  It is the face of your company online, the first sales person an online visitor meets, and a great marketing and communications tool that never sleeps, never eats and costs little to maintain.  Therefore, your website should be at the forefront of your marketing program, not the backend.  Especially considering you can send people there at any time of day, with relatively inexpensive marketing and have it work its magic over and over again. I guess my point is this, businesses need to adopt the idea that their website is an investment.  Only then will the website and online presence really start working for the business.  Once this idea takes hold, it can be adopted into themarketing plan to keep the website at the forefront of marketing efforts and therefore, keep the always-working, never-stopping, creative-as-you-want-to-make-it marketing engine, that is the website, in the shape that it should be in, to really compete with your competition online and start getting a Return on the investment already made online. If you have any questions about how to turn things around and start doing more with your website or online marketing activities, or you haven’t taken that vital step yet to get your business online, please contact us today and we will be happy to talk to you more about your situation and what can be done about it.  Realizing the issue exists is the first and most often, hardest problem.  Do something about it and start on the road to a more successful online presence.