Configure An Analytics Target Marketing Program
Includes Consulting Setup Training Tracking Code Setup Plus Ecommerce
Tracking for Google Analytics
Sunday, September 20, 2009
By: David Stoyko
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GOOGLE ANALYTICS
DASHBOARD EXAMPLE |
Nearly all small businesses have a measurement system in place for their
website (though too many aren't aware of the analytics data available
from their web hosting service for no additional cost).
Excellent web analytics tools are now available for small
businesses for free or at low cost, so no one can say these days, "I
can't afford the software." In particular, Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics/)
and ClickTracks (www.clicktracks.com) are within reach of nearly all
small businesses.
But small businesses just aren't able to do much with the data at their
fingertips.
Because larger businesses use analytics and testing and small businesses
seldom do, the performance gap between large and small business
profitability becomes greater every year.
Why Consultants Are Needed
The gap, in my opinion, is because small businesses don't have a person
on staff who has the training, the time, and the focus to gather,
analyze, and act on the data, resulting in improved efficiency of the
website and higher conversion rates.
Here's my conclusion. Small businesses that "get it" and really are
willing to pay the price to improve must find and engage competent and
creative web analytics consultants for several hours per month.
Reports. Frankly, you don't merely need expensive analyst reports on
what's happening on the site or in sales. They're important, but that's
merely maintenance. Google Analytics and most other professional
analytics packages can be set up to e-mail you regular reports. Reports,
properly configured, may alert you to problems, but reports alone will
not move you forward.
Analysis. Consultants need to be engaged to:
-Study your data regularly over a period of many months,
-Make recommendations for how to improve your site and online sales,
-Design and implement tests that can determine whether these hypotheses
are accurate, and then perhaps
-Help you implement the changes on your website, if you don't already
have a web designer or webmaster who can do that for you.
-A Consultant Model
-Here's a possible shape that a web analytics consultant contract might
take:
Hourly rate: $75 to $200 per hour. This may sound like a lot of money,
but we don't flinch when we take our cars for repair. Well, we may
flinch, but we do it because we must. A consultant's hourly rate will
depend upon experience, the number of hours contracted for each month --
and, frankly, exposure to large companies that expect to pay higher
hourly rates. If it makes you feel better, compare consultant costs to
the lost opportunities and the potential gain. Getting a good consultant
should make you many, many times more than you pay, so long as your
business has potential.
Set-up Phase. When you first engage a consultant, he or she will want to
set up your analytics package so that provides the data that will be
most helpful to your kind of business. This might include determining
appropriate KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for your company and
setting up reports that can be generated automatically. This phase might
take 4 to 6 hours, more or less, depending on your business and the
current state of your analytics.
Monthly Analysis. I recommend that you engage an analyst for 4 to 10
hours per month to study your data and make recommendations. This is
time consuming, hard work. Unless you have the training, you won't be
able to dig deep because you won't know from experience where it is most
productive to dig.
Testing Cycles. Two to four times per year you'll want your analyst to
run tests that you and your analyst agree upon. These tests will
typically help you optimize your landing pages, navigation system, user
interface, etc. Setting up tests is time intensive, and typically
includes test design, graphics design, page layout, and then analysis of
the data once you have collected statistically significant data. The
results might then suggests a couple of other tests to optimize a page.
Such tests might take 20 to 40 hours per cycle.
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