by Wendy Moore on July 21, 2010
A Great No Cost Tool to Help You Build Your List
As business owners, many of us are eager to attract more clients to make them aware of what we do. Doing business, however, is not just all about creating a growing list of clients but also encouraging these people to take action and purchase your products, utilise your services or attend your events.
Keeping track of how your business is doing on a regular basis should be considered a priority by any entrepreneur. You need to know the behavior of your target audience, not only in relation to what you do and what you offer but and also their response. This can easily be done today through various advanced online tools.
One of the most valuable tools you can use to monitor your web traffic, the behavior of your visitors and the effectiveness of your marketing strategy is Google Analytics.
As its name suggests, it helps not only entrepreneurs but advertisers and publishers to analyze data regarding website traffic. By using analytics you are better able to create and tailor promotional materials that are well-targeted using appropriate keywords and make your website more effective in terms of converting visitors to clients.
Google Analytics is an automated tool that is free to use and can be customized according to how you want to gather your data. It is capable of monitoring your reports and automatically alerting you about data changes. Its flexible customization feature also lets you organise your data just as you want to see it in your reports.
To determine the trend in your business, graphs and charts are available. They let you see various details such as the number of visits your website received for a certain period according to pages, new visits and page views among other data, number of transactions, revenues earned, the geographical location of your visitors, average time spent on web page or site. By having this data easily accessible, you can easily decide on your next action to capture even more attention from your visitors.
For those utilizing Adwords to drive web traffic, Google Analytics provides a detailed report that will strongly influence your decision on purchasing powerful keywords for your business. It even lets you see the number of clicks you’ve gained for a particular keyword, the cost of those clicks, conversion and ecommerce transaction. Additionally, you have an accurate perspective of the revenues you’ve earned, return on investment and margin.
Another powerful feature of this no cost Google tool is its capability of showing you where your visitors come from. Google Analytics provides a map with the appropriate segments and allows you to know the number of visitors you have from the various geographical locations. Through this feature, business owners will then be able to determine where their huge market is situated.
With these great features available to Google Analytics users, it is easy for you to tailor your marketing strategy to your target market. All the necessary data on the performance of your business is there for you to analyze and guide you in creating a marketing plan that really works.
Need help determining your best list builidng strategy? Check out a Strategy Session with Wendy here.
By Wendy Moore
Copyright 2010 Savvy Web Women Pty Ltd
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE?
You can as long as you include the following (links must be active):
Wendy Moore is the founder of www.savvywebwomen.com and creator of the Savvy List Building Blog - the information packed resource that shows business owners and entrepreneurs how to massively increase the clietns they want and put more cash in their pockets by dramatically increasing their public profile and credibility. To receive your FREE Special Report and weekly how-to articles to expand your online List Building toolkit, visit www.wendymoore.net.
by Wendy Moore on July 2, 2010
How to Get Found on the Internet: the importance of Choosing a Name for Your Website
Being online is a must for businesses today. As the internet is considered the largest marketplace with absolutely no geographical limitations, it makes sense then to be seen and heard online in whatever field of business you’re in. And one of the the most effective ways to do this is to set up a website.
Before creating your website, though, the first thing you need to think about is what name to use as your unique identification. Technically, a website name is called a URL or Uniform Resource Locator and is often referred to as a web address. This is the unique address of your site which can be accessed on the internet by millions of web users.
To ensure that your website is easily located by your target audience, you should use a name that best represents your business or what your business does as much as possible. However, in case the name already exists on the internet, you can use a name that is very closely related to what you do. For example, we use a website name of www.SavvyStarterKits.com for those looking to have their Social Media Sites set up for them. www.WendyMoore.net sends people to my blog.
When used in your web address, this name becomes your domain name which is just a component of your URL. The goal of this is to make your website easy to remember by web users. The domain name serves as your identification on the internet according to the Domain Name System (DNS) and you have ownership rights to this as well. Just make sure that you register this with domain name registrars so that no one else can use it on the internet.
A registrar is an organization that reserves domain names online. Legitimate ones have to be accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN or by a national country code top-level domain authority. They offer either free or paid listing of your website address. Find reputable domain name registrars by asking for a recommendation from a friend or colleague or searching for reviews online.
You may have also noticed that some sites end in .com, the others in .net while the others carry the initials of the country from where they are located such as .com.au, .com.de and .com.ph. This actually depends partly on your personal preference (a .com is shorter for marketing purposes) or country limiations. For example, you need to have a UK address to own a .co.uk name. Also, if you want to let your target clients know where you’re operating, you may choose to register the local domain, such as the .com.au or .co.uk name.
An ideal way to name your website or online business is to always be specific. In other words, your website name has to be in line with your brand name and keyword rich. For this reason, it is a good idea to create a unique name for your business where you know you can get the domain name as well. Think of something catchy and one people will be able to recall right away.
If you’re targeting women, for instance, you may want to include that word in your domain name so that it comes out in search engine results when people search for businesses run by women.
For example, www.SavvyWebWomen.com appears organically on Google ranked in position 3, out of over 282 million search results for the keywords “web women”.
Finally, pick a short domain name combining meaningful words and not just letters and numbers. Remember that you’re creating your own ID on the internet and you want your target audience to find you without much difficulty. Take the time to research and list down possible names before setting your mind on the best one you will use for your website.
Not sure how to name or brand your website? Check out a Strategy Session with Wendy here.
By Wendy Moore
Copyright 2010 Savvy Web Women Pty Ltd
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE?
You can as long as you include the following (links must be active):
Wendy Moore is the founder of www.savvywebwomen.com and creator of the Savvy List Building Blog - the information packed resource that shows business owners and entrepreneurs how to massively increase the clietns they want and put more cash in their pockets by dramatically increasing their public profile and credibility. To receive your FREE Special Report and weekly how-to articles to expand your online List Building toolkit, visit www.wendymoore.net.
