Analytics: If You Do Not Have Them You Are Crazy

If you spend any money at all on Internet marketing you need to have an analytics solution in place. If you are selling products directly through your website and you do not have a way to study your traffic patterns you are insane.

Garnering traffic, engagement, brand awareness, and conversions are the goals of any online marketing effort. And sure, you may know how many conversions you get on your website. You may even have an idea about how much traffic is coming to your website and how engaged your users are. What you do not know, if you are lacking an analytics solution, is the most important metrics of them all.

Conversions are what pay the bills. You need to know who, what, when, where, and why users are converting. Traffic, Engagement and Brand awareness are useful and beneficial but at the end of the day conversions are the only thing that makes money. Without analytics you cannot discern between traffic sources or see how users are interacting with your web site.          

If you are spending money on Internet marketing chances are you are not focusing on one channel alone. Most likely you have a newsletter, some social media, an SEO presence, and perhaps some affiliate links. Each of these channels has strengths and weaknesses and are useful in pursuit of certain goals and thus need to be measured. Social Media is excellent for promoting engagement but may be lacking when it comes to driving convertible traffic back to your website. Affiliate links drive qualified traffic but do nothing to promote engagement. Search engine marketing provides more traffic than any other channel but again it does nothing to promote engagement.

You need to be able to parse out which channels your converts are coming from and re-assign your time, resources, and energy accordingly. Even if your goal is something other than a monetary conversion you still need analytics You need to be able to see which of your online marketing channels is contributing positively to the metrics you are focusing on. If you do not have analytics you do have options (and Xynergy® can help!).

Google Analytics has become the default tool. It is a powerful tool with deep functionality, and it’s free! The problem with Google Analytics is that it can be difficult to set up for those without extensive experience. We recommend contacting a professional web design firm (shameless self-plug) to get you set up and trained on Google Analytics. Alternatively, Adobe, IBM, Marin Software, Enkata, and NICE Interaction Analytics all put out super powerful software capable of very precise tracking. You are looking at a fairly expensive purchase however and we only recommend such software for our large enterprise clients.

We can review these solutions in a different (much longer) blog post. Tweet us! Or you can Call, E-mail, or Fax . We do analytics installs and trainings regularly in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. We charge moderate prices (typically it takes less than 2 hours) and as you can tell we think everyone should be analyzing their traffic. You might be surprised by what you find.

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Contact us for help installing Analytics on your Website.

  or Call 505-557-7780