Use analytics to improve your site conversion

This article is aimed at small businesses trying to improve the conversion they get from their website. Small businesses usually have very few resources available, and usually the website is only one of the many tools the marketing manager needs to look after. I have therefore tried to summarise the best ways a small business can use website analytics to improve conversion.

Install Google analytics

It surprises me how many small businesses have a website but have no idea how many people are visiting it, what are the most popular pages, which search engines they are coming from and what they are doing once they are on the site. All you need is a web analytics tool. There are several very good packages out there, but for a small business I would recommend Google Analytics. First of all Google Analytics is a free website analytics tool. It is easy to download and to set up. It can also easily link to any paid for or organic search activity you undertake with Google, giving you a clear indication of which keywords are driving traffic and sales, and whic not.

Measure your website traffic over time

Using Google Analytics, small business owners can easily review the overall traffic coming to their site, then start breaking it down by source (i.e. search engine, pay-per-click, affiliates…), by keyword, by time. The detail offered will enable you to identify which areas to focus on, and how effective your online marketing spend is.

Review your performance

Once you implemented some changes, ensure you go back and measure how successful they have been. You’ll need to constantly improve, measure, amend, review. In this way you will slowly start affecting the overall conversion on your site. So, constantly test new copy, new keywords, new titles, then measure and learn from your tests. The most important thing is to only make one change at a time, otherwise you will never know what has actually impacted your conversion.