Web Resources | Everything you need to know to succeed online

By Monique Martin

You’ve built your Web site and signed up for Google Analytics. The reports are full of juicy numbers, but you aren’t sure how to translate those numbers into making your Web site more profitable. Google Analytics’ goal setting can help. Even if you don’t have a traditional ecommerce site and use your site just for lead generation, Google Analytics goal tracking can give you valuable information about customer conversions. continue »

By Monique Martin

You’re reading your latest Web analytics report, but it might as well be Greek. What does it all mean? Here’s a quick primer on hits and pageviews that will help you make sense out of it all. continue »

By Tammy Elizabeth Southin

You have a small business, and you have the Web site; now what? If you are not selling items directly through your site, you might be wondering if those uncluttered pages with the right amount of graphics are being read or being ignored. Do Web analytics matter to your business if you don’t have an ecommerce site? continue »

By Monique Martin

You signed up for Google Analytics and even took the time to create goals. But now that you’ve got your reports, you’re not sure what to make of them. What is the $index, how is it calculated and what does it mean to you and your business?

No matter what type of small business you have, Google Analytics offers an invaluable insight into your Web site’s performance. One of the most overlooked and yet most important data sets is the $index. continue »

By Melissa J Luther

The term conversion is confusing to many small business owners, because most people think only of a sale as a conversion. However, a conversion can be almost any action a visitor takes on your Web site. It all depends on your goals. continue »

By Melissa J Luther

Your Web site is a form of advertising for your business. Many of your advertising campaigns, as well as the search engines, will direct interested visitors to a landing page on your Web site. As with any advertising campaign, you want to know how well it is working, and calculating your Web site conversion rate is an effective method of measuring this. continue »

By Philippa Gamse

Imagine that you own a beautifully designed yacht. It looks great on the surface of the water, with superb lines, gleaming decks, a well-appointed galley… but you’re having real trouble getting out of the harbor, and you can’t figure out why!

You investigate, and you find that beneath the surface your beautiful boat has a number of slow, silent, leaks. None of them are big enough to sink you on their own, so there’s no obvious immediate crisis — just a constant drain on your efficiency and your speed.

I’ve been reviewing Web traffic reports for over 10 years, and I believe that this analogy applies very well to almost all business Web sites. Very few sites are so terrible or have something so wrong with them that they’re clearly a disaster. Yet just about every site has some area where it’s quietly losing traffic, losing potential business or the chance to create relationships — or failing to attract visitors in the first place. continue »

By Hostway

Email marketing is one of the best ways to generate sales. The Direct Marketing Association predicts that email marketing’s return on investment (ROI) will clock in at $43.52 for every $1 spent in 2009. With numbers like that, who wouldn’t use this low-cost, high-return marketing channel?

Here’s a checklist to help you start and manage your email marketing campaigns: continue »

By Jerry Bader

With today’s Web site tracking software and services you can find out a lot about the people who visit your Web site. You can learn where they’re from, what kind of browser they’re using, how long they stayed on your site and a whole lot more. But what all this high tech intelligence won’t tell you is what kind of people they are, and how likely they are to be transformed by your Web presentation from viewers to customers. continue »

By Hostway

Search engine marketing covers all the activities you do to drive search engine traffic to your Web site. It isn’t difficult, but it requires a great deal of attention to detail. We’ve created a checklist to help you plan or manage all the pieces of your SEM strategy. continue »