Archive for the ‘business website’ Category

Introduction to the Google Analytics website dashboard

Posted by Andre' Savoie On September - 26 - 2011

The Google Analytics dashboard is one of the serious website owner’s most valuable tools. Full of useful information and is hands down the best way to keep tabs on your internet marketing efforts. This blog post will give you a first glance at the dashboard and consists of a step-by-step wizard that instructs you on how to begin analyzing traffic data on your website.

Getting Started – Sign Up

The first step that you will see, after logging into your Google Account, is the “sign up for Google Analytics” link. When you create your Google Analytics website dashboard within your Google account, you add the functions and services to your existing Google login. There is no charge for either a Google account or the Google Analytics service.

Step 2 – Install the Tracking Codes

The second step is to get and install the tracking code for your website(s). Google will ask you to enter your website data (URL, etc.), and will create a “tracking code” from that. This code should be placed within the <HEAD> </HEAD> section of your webpage. The code is invisible to visitors, but it places a “cookie” within the visitor’s browser that keeps track of your visitor’s activity while on your website.

If you are not sure about how to do this bit of programming, ask about our special offer to install Google Analytics for you.

Step 3 – Getting Familiar with the Dashboard

The third and final step in the Google Analytics process is to learn about your visitor’s browsing habits. After placing the code within your website’s header tag, the guest’s browsing activity while on your website will be recorded. A few things you can learn include:

The amount of time spent on the site
Links visited within the site
How many pages they looked at
How they found your site

These are just a few of the important pieces of data you can learn from your dashboard, and will help you to gain a general understanding of a “trend” with user activity on your website. For example, if most of the visitors exit your website on a particular page within your site, you can analyze that particular page to see if there is a reason as to why the visitors leave your site after visiting that page.

Analyzing where customers leave before a purchase of a product on any retail site will show the store/website owner what they need to change on their website in order to keep the customers from leaving without purchasing their product.

Most Important Elements of Your Dashboard

While there are volumes of great materials written about the ins and outs of Google Analytics, I would like to point out what I believe are the most important, and practical aspects of the dashboard:

Traffic Sources

Your dashboard will tell you where your website traffic is coming from. This is very important to understand how much of your traffic comes from each source, and how much (if at all) it changes over time. The 3 major traffic sources are:

Direct Traffic
Traffic from Referring Sites
Traffic from Search Engines (including keywords)

Visitor Info

Learning where your visitors come from, what they do on your site is vitally important. A few things you can learn from this section are:

The locality of web visitors
How frequently they visit your site
What type of browser (and mobile device) they used to find your site.

Goals

At the end of the day, having measurement in place to evaluate your website is critically important. As such, you should configure goals for your website that you can track. Potential goals include:

Sign ups for newsletters or special offers
Completed contact forms
Purchase of online items
Amount of time spent on the site

Regular Use of the Dashboard

After completing the initial steps, you will then login straight to your Google Analytics website dashboard from then on. Your website(s) will be displayed by URL, and you can click on that particular URL to see the traffic trends that have occurred on your site since your last visit to your Analytics account.

Analyzing the pages that your visitors enter your website and which pages that they leave your website are again, the most important sections of the dashboard. By looking at what page is the most popular entry page, you are able to tell that this page is more than likely the most SEO friendly, the most linked-to page from external sources, and also what the customer is looking for the most while visiting your website. For example, if most customers enter your website on the contact page, they are looking for a way to contact you more than anything else. If they were to enter on the products page, they are obviously looking for a product that your website sells, etc.

Glancing at the traffic trends for your website will tell you specific days of the week that your website has more visitors than others, the source of the visitor (how the visitor found your website), and how many visitors are repeat visitors/customers.

Overall, the Google Analytics website dashboard is more than likely the most simple, yet advanced, website analytics software to date. There are others such as AWStats, etc. – but Google Analytics is both platform-independent and free – which is always a plus.

Analytics, business website, Google, ROI, Uncategorized, website traffic

4 Steps to maximize your Facebook business page

Posted by Andre' Savoie On June - 22 - 2010

Facebook – not just for kids anymore

Once you have set up a Facebook page for your business, it would be a waste of valuable Internet real estate to just let it sit there, hoping people find it and see your company.

Instead, make the most of this opportunity to increase your presence on the web and attract the attention of current and potential customer.

Some ways you can use Facebook for business include:

1. Link your Facebook page to your official website. Putting the Facebook icon on your homepage will tell those who visit your website that they can also find you on Facebook.

2. Announce your arrival on Facebook through a group email. Send a blast email to your mailing list to let them know you are on Facebook and to invite them to become a fan. This will quickly establish a fan base and encourage people to become active on your page, posting comments and viewing the latest news and events.

3. Link to other social media. If you currently have an account on Twitter or YouTube or maintain a blog for your business, linking them to your Facebook account will save time while adding to the depth of content on each of these sites.

4. Run your first Facebook ad campaign. See how Facebook can turn into customers and profits by running a campaign and tracking the results.

Once you have accomplished these four steps, you are well on your way to making this social phenomenon into a source of increased profit for your business!

business website, Facebook, social media

4 tips for maximizing LinkedIn

Posted by Andre' Savoie On June - 14 - 2010

Get the most from Linked In, Part 1 of 2

So you have a log in and you have filled in the most basic information on LinkedIn. You know that other people are using this site because you hear them talk about it and the people they have met using it. How can you join the others who are getting the most from LinkedIn, the leading professional social networking website?

1. Develop your profile.

A generic profile does not allow you to connect with others as efficiently and makes it harder for your connections to help you by making introductions. Be sure to fill out past employers, education, and the time you have been in your current position, as these are the easiest ways to connect with other professionals like you and to be found by those looking for someone with your experience.

Additionally, be sure that your profile is displayed. Hiding the profile you have developed and worked on will make it harder for you to build a presence on this website and in the professional community.

2. Bring LinkedIn into your real life.

When you meet people, ask them if they are on LinkedIn. If so, ask to connect with them soon after meeting them so that you are fresh in their mind. This will help your LinkedIn network reflect the network you have built in reality.

3. Work the recommendations.

Recommend others and ask people you have worked with to recommend you. Reach out by making the effort to recommend others before they ask you to do so; this will help your relationship with them, help others on LinkedIn by giving them an accurate reflection of the person you have recommended, and may increase the chances that you will be recommended as well.

4. Promote your profile

Do your customers or personal contacts know you have a LinkedIn profile? One important step in succeeding with this tool is to add a LinkedIn logo to your website, blog, email signature. or other marketing materials. Each time we look at website analytics and traffic reports, customers are always amazed that they receive traffic from simply including a logo in their email but it works!

Look for the long term

These are the first steps to getting the most from LinkedIn, but there is much more you can do with this important professional tool. One good way to think about Linked In is that it can become your professional networking tool for 201o and you should treat it as such. Don’t spam people with advertising, make comments you might later regret or do things that you wouldn’t do if you were in person.

Get used to participating on Linked In and you might be surprised what the results would be.

business website, LinkedIn, social media

How to use LinkedIn Groups

Posted by Andre' Savoie On June - 11 - 2010

Groups: Step 2 in LinkedIn Success

One of the most valuable tools for professionals and companies who are using LinkedIn is the ability to join and form groups. As a member of LinkedIn, you are able to join other professionals like yourself or who share interests with you, create new groups that reflect needs and offerings, and ask questions of the members. Each of these actions will help you get added value out of your profile on this website.

How to best utilize LinkedIn Groups:

Join a group (or groups). As you establish your profile and presence on LinkedIn, you will find that there are already existing groups that have been formed. Individuals may form these groups for a variety of reasons such as common experiences, common goals, shared educational backgrounds, or professional experiences. By joining these groups, you will be able to connect with others who are like you or who share your goals, expanding your professional network. Additionally, you may find knowledge or skills among the members that can help you in your professional development.

Create a new group (or groups). If you are looking for a group that does not yet exist, you can create your own. Remember, however, that this is not an opportunity for you to sell your product to members. LinkedIn groups must add value for their members, and abusing them by promoting your own product is not an acceptable use of this tool.

Ask questions. You can ask questions of your group to learn new information from people you trust or to use their experiences to make important choices for your own career or company.

Answer questions. Responding to the questions others pose is a great way to establish your knowledge and authority, giving yourself credibility in the eyes of current and potential associates. However, once again, it is important that your answers offer useful information and are not just a plug for a particular product or company.

Getting involved is the best way to start

If you want to get smart on LinkedIn, it’s time to get involved with the many groups you can find on this professional social networking site. If you are unsure where to start or would like help developing your social website profile contact us today.

business website, LinkedIn, online marketing, social media

3 signs you might have a crummy website

Posted by Andre' Savoie On June - 7 - 2010

How “good” is a website?

When I meet with clients for the first time, one of the things they usually want to know is “what do you think of my website?“ I’ve learned to be careful with these answers because site owners can be a bit like parents in that they think their website is beautiful even though others might not.

But more importantly, I’ve also learned that there is more to a good website than just pretty design. An effective site is one that does the job – and for business people that means converting visitors into buyers.

So in an effort to help people evaluate their own websites I suggest the following:

3 Signs You May Have A Crummy Website:

1. Your contact information is hard to find.

This seems to be problem #1 with web designers. They create a beautiful site that doesn’t offer an easy way to contact you. Remember that yours is one of billions of websites and that people will be spending mere seconds on each page – so make sure your phone number or email address are easy to find in the top right hand corner.

Oh and make sure it’s in text and not a graphics file so that mobile users can click on it when they need to.

2. You cannot update your website yourself.

If you cannot update your site yourself that means the site is probably outdated or stale. Google is out looking for fresh, relevant information and if you are unable to update your website than there is not much chance your information is terribly fresh.

Plus, with the amount of free content management systems like Word Press available to the public, there really is no excuse for this unless you have a crummy website.

3. You can’t find yourself in searches.

I see this one a lot. Website owners that can’t Google their own site and find it with relative ease. There are a whole host of reasons this could be the case – and all of them point to a crummy website (or at least a crummy web designer).

Changes you can make

If you didn’t pass the crummy website test don’t despair. There are changes you can make without having to scrap the whole site and start over again.

If you would like to learn more about website fixups that will help in any of these areas please contact us today.

business website, internet marketing, website development, website traffic

Creating a Facebook page for your business

Posted by Andre' Savoie On May - 27 - 2010

Business Pages for Facebook

One of the first things people ask me about these days when we talk about online marketing is Facebook. They want to know if it’s really a tool for business and if anyone actually makes money from being there. In short the answer is yet.

Now, if you are not currently on Facebook, you may not be aware that before you can get started on a page for your business, you must first create a Facebook page for yourself. When you create a personal page, it is important to remember that your business will be linked to the personal page.

Not quite what you might expect

This means that the personal page should be created with the image of your business in mind, and privacy settings should be carefully monitored to make sure that nothing is visible that you do not want to be seen. After all, a great picture of you and your friends at last year’s Halloween party might not be the image you want to project to customers!

How to Get Started

Once you have set up a Facebook page for yourself, you will be able to set up one for your business. You can load pictures such as an official logo or photos from recent publicity events as well as videos and other information. You can also begin to recruit fans and develop Facebook-specific marketing promotions or link the Facebook page to other social media tools such as Twitter or a blog.

A Word of Caution

Facebook is an easy to use, user-friendly interface, so once you get comfortable, you will be able to update and change your page whenever you have new products or promotions that you want to bring to the attention of your customers.

HOWEVER, with Facebook you are opening your business up to additional exposure and one to one interaction unlike any you may have seen before. Be cautious to start slowly and learn the ropes before going crazy, because the last thing you want to do is annoy your current or potential customers into finding someone else.

Learn the ropes of social media slowly by listening, learning and interacting. Add value when you can and look for opportunities to gently remind people of what you do. Follow this advice and you’ll be off to the right start.

business website, communications, Facebook, social media

Why advertise on Facebook

Posted by Andre' Savoie On May - 26 - 2010

Reaching target audiences

One of the hardest parts of developing an advertising campaign is ensuring that it is seen by the right people – the ones who can turn into potential customers. The greatest ads in the world won’t do anything to generate business if the only people who see them are those who have no use for your products and services.

Facebook’s Advertising Platform

So what does this have to do with Facebook? Due to the nature of the information that people share on Facebook, you can display your advertisements to the exact demographic who is most likely to respond to them and become your newest customer.

For example, if you coordinate speed dating events and are looking for more potential attendees, you would want to put your ads where they could be seen by single people in your area. Since Facebook asks if members are married or not, their age, and where they live, you can display ads to single members who live within a certain radius of the event location and are in the target range of ages.

Or, if you have developed a product that would be appreciate by male sports fans between 18 and 35, you can put an ad on Facebook that will show up along the borders of their page during the almost one hour that the average Facebook user spends on the site.

Comparing Metrics

We suggest running a campaign on Facebook and comparing your metrics with those of ads on other networks such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Generally speaking you will probably find the number of clicks are less – but you should also find that the costs are much less to. So you can usually get good “bang for your buck” so to speak.

And remember – at the end of the day it’s not about the amount of clicks. What matters is the amount of visitors who convert – so keeping an eye on the conversions will better help you compare and contrast the effectiveness of advertising on Facebook

Too Much Information?

If you have a Facebook page but would rather have fun instead of running ads we can help. Contact us today for more information on paid search marketing programs which will advertise your business on websites such as Facebook.

advertising, business website, Facebook, PPC, social media, Uncategorized

6 Tips for Creating Content That People Want to Read

Posted by Andre' Savoie On May - 24 - 2010

Website Content 2010

Is there anything worse than clicking on a site to find it was last updated in 2007? If you answered YES to this question, than you are now one step closer to becoming an “SEO Expert with a Real Job” and learning a little something about what drives internet marketing.

Web users in 2010 are really getting savvy. This makes it even more important to have content on your website that is either useful, interesting, informative, funny, or all of the above.

In this installment in our “SEO Explained” series we will take a look at why you should be creating content and practical tips for how you can implement it on your website.

So People with Real Jobs Can Understand, Please

Like meta data, SEO types like to over complicate the content issue. Want to learn about keyword density, long tail phrases or keyword relevance? Forget it.

The “secret sauce” to creating good content that web users want to read has more to do with being recently created and interesting to read than anything else.

Why Should You Care? Because Google Says So!

Google has done an incredible job of protecting their methodology for how search results are displayed. However in this case they are handing us the playbook and telling us exactly what we need to be doing! The snipped from Google’s Webmaster Central pretty much sums it up:

And, as if you needed more than just Google’s guidance, take a look around the web and see what the most popular sites (according to Alexa) that are not search engines:

Facebook
You Tube
Wikipedia
Biadu
Blogger

What do they all have in common? Content. The popularity of these sites is driven by content that is being updated on a regular basis.

What Can and SHOULD You Be Doing

Getting excited about writing is a bit like making a commitment to losing weight – it sounds great for the first 2 weeks and then it eventually gets pushed to the back burner.

I talk to website owners everyday who have made a few blog posts or done a video but never stayed with it. And they are frustrated because the little they did do has not yielded results. And the best thing you can do if you want to build content on your website is to start making time daily or weekly for it.

6 Practical Tips for Creating Content and Sticking To It:

Find a subject you are passionate about or have an area of expertise.
Budget some time daily to write or create content
Create a content plan that has a schedule of topics for 3-4 months so you don’t have to remember what to write about.
Use free tools such as Google’s Wonder Wheel to see what other topics people are interested in
Shoot for articles of 350 -600 words. No thesis or doctoral papers necessary!
Share your work on social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linked In where you are already participating.

No Excuses

For those of you who hate writing, are seriously limited on time or simply aren’t creative there is hope. You can easily find writers out there who will learn your story and help you tell it to the world. You can find everything from high school students to seasoned writers with web experience who are out there ready to help.

business website, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, Uncategorized, website behavior, website development

How Facebook protects your brand

Posted by Andre' Savoie On May - 21 - 2010

One of the best reasons to put your company on Facebook is that it offers unique opportunities to protect your brand, both on Facebook and on search engines such as Google. Often, people avoid bringing their businesses into online forum that they cannot control because they are afraid of the negative ramifications that may result.

Who controls your online brand?

The Internet is a very democratic place – with a few exceptions, anyone can put up a blog post, a video, a picture, or even a website about your company with or without your approval. However, if you set up an official company page on which you can control the content, the first thing that shows up when people search for your company name will be your page rather than someone else’s blog or a competitor bashing your products.

Why Facebook for Business?

With hundreds of millions of users, protecting your brand on Facebook is more than a good idea, it’s almost a necessity.

And now that Google and other popular search engines can access the information on Facebook pages, that brand protection goes beyond the social media or networking site and adds to your overall brand reputation on the Internet as a whole.

Protect Your Online Resume

When your Facebook page shows up on the first page of a search, it does so in addition to the company’s actual web site, giving the potential customer two opportunities to be directed to your company. It also pushes one more competitor off the page, allowing you to control that much more of the valuable real estate on Page 1.

business website, Facebook, search engine marketing, SEO, Uncategorized, website development

Facebook for business is a smart move

Posted by Andre' Savoie On May - 20 - 2010

Not just for kids anymore

Depending on what you have heard about Facebook and whether or not you are familiar with it, using it for business might sound like a crazy suggestion. However, no matter how much or how little you know about the biggest social networking site on the Internet, there are several reasons why you should learn more about how it can help your company:

- Facebook is not a passing trend. There are over 400 million people around the world who are using Facebook. Can you afford to ignore this huge base of potential customers?

- Brand protection. Establishing your company on Facebook will help to protect your brand, not only on that particular website but also on Google as well.

- Reach more clients. Facebook offers a unique way to reach out to your customers and interact with them. The average Facebook user spends a little less than an hour a day perusing the website, offering you a great opportunity to reach out to them as customers.

- SEO value. Facebook can also be used for search engine optimization, bringing more potential customers to your website regularly.

With all of these advantages, it’s hard to come up with any reason why you wouldn’t want to get your company on Facebook! Visit our website for more information about social media consulting.

business website, communications, Facebook, search engine optimization, Uncategorized, website development