Tracking Single Page Conversions by Kim Wingate

Tracking Single Page Conversions by Kim Wingate

For e-commerce sites, it is very important to track and improve
conversion ratios. And, in Turning Visits Into Action, many
conversion ratio improvement tactics and techniques are explained
in detail. But for some e-commerce sites, conversion rates need
to be tracked one page at a time.

An overall site conversion ratio may not provide the level of
detail needed to make the greatest possible improvements. An
overall conversion ratio would be calculated by taking the number
of orders generated and dividing it by the total number of
visitors to arrive at a percentage. But some sites may have
traffic coming to many different areas for reasons other than
purchasing - content areas of general interest, financial
information, job seekers, etc. To really expose specific areas
of improvement, it might be necessary to break the stats down to
further level of detail.

For example, you may want to calculate a conversion ratio based
on the number of visitors reaching your "shopping cart" page.
This way, you can make improvements to your shopping cart page
and know that your results aren't being skewed by traffic to
other areas of your site. You may have 500 visitors reaching your
shopping cart page while at the same time you are generating 10
orders. Your conversion ratio is 2% for this comparison. By
making improvements to your shopping cart page, you may see this
ratio improve to 5% - generating 25 orders for every 500 visitors
to this page.

Similarly, you may want calculate a conversion ratio for sales of
a specific product based on the number of visitors coming to that
specific product's information page. You may have 10 Widget
orders for every 250 visitors to the Widget overview page. This
works out to be a conversion ratio of 4% for this comparison.
Improvements to the Widget overview page may yield 25 Widget
orders for every 250 visitors - increasing the conversion ratio
to 10%.

If your sales process requires multiple steps, you might want to
track conversions from one page to the next. The first page of
your sales process might get 1000 visitors, while the second page
shows 500 visitors - you have a 50% conversion rate from the
first page to the next. You can make improvements to the first
page and try to get the ratio up to 60%, or 75%. In this manner,
you can improve the conversion ratio of a multi-step sales
process one page at a time to finally increase your sales
ratio overall.

You can track these multiple comparisons in a spreadsheet by
pulling visitor information from your site traffic reporting
tools and combining it with order information. Of course, visitor
information is rarely exact, but it is intended to provide a
relative data point - if the data is off, at least it will be
off consistently. A spreadsheet like this, developed over time,
can provide you the detailed type of analysis necessary to
improve the critical "cogs" of your online sales machine.
About the Author
Kim Wingate of AvidSurfer, is the publisher of "Big Time Banner
Advertising" and "Turning Visits Into Action." Both of these
informative Web business manuals, as well as a FREE conversion
ratio case study, can be found online at:
http://www.avidsurfer.com/default.asp?src=arts

Site Statistics - What they should be telling you and probably aren't by Sage Lewis

Site Statistics - What they should be telling you and probably aren't by Sage Lewis

Site statistics are the underlying visitor details of your
site. They can tell you things like: where a visitor came
from, what key phrases people are using to find your site
on search engines, how many visitors have come to your site,
what pages people looked at the most, what pages people
looked at the least and even what web browser people used
to get to your site. It would seem like that is all the
information anyone would ever need to know about a site.
However, virtually all statistical analysis programs are
very difficult to understand, and the data isn't organized
in a very useful manner. While there seems like quite a
bit of information, there is so much more useful information
that is possible to achieve that could give you much more
highly telling results.

For example, with the use of cookies and tying that information
into the raw statistical logs that your server tracks, you
suddenly can watch amazing things. For example, you could
easily watch one user over any period of days or months as they
go and come from your site. You would know exactly what pages
they saw and if and when they bought from your site or signed
up to your newsletter. Affiliate programs and many online
shopping carts are using cookies to keep track of when
a person buys something or makes a certain action. However,
using them in conjunction with server log statistics seems
to be a rarity.

By combining cookies with server logs you would be able to
track every single marketing strategy. You would know if your
pay per click placements turned browsers into buyers or subscribers.
By using different domain names, you would easily be able to
track all of your offline promotions from beginning to end.
Once a person enters your site you would always know exactly
where they came from, when they got there and ultimately if
you should continue marketing the same way you are marketing
now, or if you should try something new.

Having this understanding would change how business is
done online. Every marketing investment, every page created
and the entire flow of a site could easily be tracked and understood.

Additionally, how you market to people would change significantly
for both the site owner and the site visitor. If a person
bought one product you could easily suggest other products
that they would probably like. Amazon has virtually mastered
this feature. This could also work for sites that don't
sell online. If you knew a person enjoyed a certain article
you could easily suggest to them that they read another
article. You could track the exact path people take through
your site and compare that with your most wanted response.
By understanding this information you could easily tweak
your site until this response increased.

However, while the technology is available to do this, most
statistical analysis programs largely do not provide the
information in this format. The technology that enables this
kind of detailed, valuable information is either custom made
for a specific, deep-pocketed company or is just extremely
expensive. The reason this has happened, in my opinion, is
that the average site owner has no idea this information is
available. And if there is no apparent demand the chances of
seeing this kind of analysis tool in the near future in not
likely.


About the Author
Sage Lewis, founder and president of the web site
promotion firm SageRock.com. He has been employed as an Internet
Strategist and design/promotion consultant for 5 years. To
subscribe to SageRock's marketing newsletter, send a blank
message to
mailto:sagerock-subscribe@egroups.com or visit the company's
site at http://www.sagerock.com

Making Tracks by Richard Bolduc

Making Tracks by Richard Bolduc

Checking your search engine placement progress can be a tedious job, and
quite time consuming.

Most articles and information on the subject will lead you to use a service
like position agent at bcentral, or another tool that will take a keyword
from you and let you know how your site is doing in the top engines under
that keyword or
keyword phrase. In most cases they only bring back results for the top forty
pages of the top 7 engines.

This is a common practice by many and often times it leads to search engine
frustration and lack of tracking. Many people fail to find their sites in
worthy positioning and constantly rework and resubmit. This is very self
defeating and can get you thrown out as a spammer.

People give up and move on to other ways of promoting their sites and leave
the hope of Front Page placement behind. Front Page search engine placement
to them seems like a waste of time and is often compared to winning the
lottery.

I track a little differently. It is much more revealing than any of the
usually prescribed methods. It is my goal to help you see the difference,
between where you "can be found" and where you are "being found".

Trying to find out where you *can be* found is the needle inthe haystack
approach I outlined above. This involves hours of guessing at what you think
the possible keyword
combinations are that you may be found under and submitting to the position
agents and waiting for a good results. The more indexes you build the more
time you can lose with these methods.

There's even more effort you have to put into inputting keywords to check the
progress of your possible placement. If no results yielded yet, then plan on
several sessions trying to track down where you can be found. They just don't
index them the as fast as they used to. This is a major pain and you can miss
so many keyword phrases that it is an empty approach to finding out anything
about your efforts.

Finding out where you *are being* found is a much more effective plan. It
tells you what's working, results come to you, and it tells you how people
are thinking to find you. You're not guessing how you think they should be
finding you. You're learning
how your clients think and how they already found you.

Okay, so how do I find out how my visitors find me? I use a simplestatistics
tracker on my sites. Your hosting company may provide stats for you check
into it. They should include a section for referrers or top referrers. If so
your all set. Find a way to access
those stats. Check the referrers section and they will tell you how you were
found. If it was through a search engine, click on the link and it should
bring you to the page you were found on, complete with the keywords used,
listed right there. You can check your progress every week and find out where
you are popping up.

If your host does not have tracking software go to www.goldstats.com or some
other FREE stats place and get yourself a statistics tracker on your site
right away!

For me, marketing without referrer stats is like...

...trying to catch a fly in the dark.
About the Author
Richard Bolduc, the webmaster for
The Rhinos Web, a featured speaker and the well known author
of "Front Page, a Webmaster Guide". Guaranteed front page
placement in all the major search engines for under $100.
Results Shown Here. http://www.rhinosweb.com/frontpage.html