Web Site Builder
Maximize ROI: Tracking the Source
of Your Online Sales
By Brad S. Konia
The Web Site Builder should be aware that tracking exactly where your sales are coming from is essential to any online marketing effort. Unfortunately, most people use only simple tracking tools, such as the log file analyzers included with their Web hosting accounts. Most log file analyzers will provide you with statistics such as how many people came to your site and which search engines or Web sites they came from. While this is valuable information, it is not enough to be "actionable."
Web Site Builder
Actionable information guides you towards a specific action that can improve your bottom line. For example, while it's interesting to know that your site is receiving 1,000 visitors a week from Google, what can you do with that knowledge? The information only becomes actionable when you can discover exactly how each of those people found your site and what each one did after arriving at the site.
In last month's article, I used the example of "Technomarine Watches" to illustrate how one might select the best search terms for which to optimize. Let's continue with this same example and discuss visitor tracking.
A conventional log file analyzer might give you information such as:
1,000 visitors came from Google last week. The most popular search terms used by those visitors were:
While this is a simplistic example, it serves its purpose. Suppose you, the web site builder, sold ten Technomarine Butterfly watches during this week. Based on the log analysis information above, you have no way of knowing where those ten sales came from. You might guess that they came from the more specific three word searches.
As I mentioned last month, it's logical to assume by the web site builder that someone searching for a specific item is more likely to buy that item. However, you could also make the argument that there were so many more searches for the more general terms, the sales probably came from those people. The point is, with the limited information provided by your server log file, you don't know anything for sure.
If you're doing search engine optimization using WebPosition Gold, it's important to know which of your search terms are yielding paying customers, and which ones are attracting window-shoppers. The reason this is so important is because search engine optimization takes time. The traffic is free once you get your site ranked, but there are only so many hours in the day that you can devote to optimizing your site. Therefore, you need to focus your efforts on the search terms that are making you the most money.
If you discover that general search terms are bringing in the most paying customers, then you might focus on improving your rankings for those terms. If you discover that more specific phrases are more profitable, then you would spend your time optimizing your site for more specific phrases.
It's much harder to achieve top rankings for general search terms than for specific search terms. However, there will usually be many more specific search terms available than general ones. So, you have to learn which strategy will have a greater impact on your sales. To gain this information and make intelligent decisions, you'll need an accurate tracking system.
There are a number of systems on the market designed to track the source of your sales. My business, Market My Site, uses and recommends a service called Hitslink. Hitslink is a Web-based service that provides all the functionality of a traditional log file analyzer, but eliminates the hassle of dealing with enormous log files. Hitslink is the service that powers the Traffic Analyzer in WebPosition Gold. It also offers an Enterprise Edition that includes advanced e-commerce tracking features.