Increase Sales from Your Web Site
Sites of Boston Tip of the Month
February 2003

b) If you're selling items on-line, you want people to purchase many items and come back often. You may be getting a lot of visitors, but few sales. Why?

The answer is the same for both:

Ask Your Web Site! Your website provides feedback better then any other advertising method. You can collect and analyze data about your visitors including:
- What search engine they used to find the website
- What they typed into the search engine (what they are looking for!)
- What pages they looked at, and in what order
- How long they spent looking at each page
- Where they left the website

Yes, it's perfectly legal. Using this information, you will know where to make improvements in your website. Examining this data on a regular basis and updating the site in response to visitor behavior provides continual improvement.

So how do you get this data? First check the data provided by your website hosting company. Some of the information may be available in these logs and most logs come with detailed instructions on how to interpret the data.

A really straightforward and easy-to-use report is provided by Web Trends Live - webtrendslive.com. You can set up an account for the eBusiness Edition of the Web Trends Reporting Service for as little as $35 per month. This service provides some website code that you add to the bottom of the code on each page of your site. Then, you can log onto your account on the Web Trends Live website at any time and review the data for any time period. Their website provides sample reports and a free trial download.

I have no association with Web Trends, but I have found it to be the best and most affordable program for small businesses. (note Dec 2008 - I now recommend the use of Google Analytics)

Use this data to improve your website and increase leads and sales.

We'll discuss this in detail in the March newsletter.

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