White Papers
Online Marketing Workshop 12/10/2009
Comox Valley - Union Bay - Royston
Presenters were Carolyn Touey from Smart Biz and Michael Regan from TIMR Web Services. These are Michael Regan's presentation notes.
What Every Business Owner Should Know To Maximize Investment In A Website.
The biggest problems in discussing a website Return on Investment (ROI) are:
- Most people don't know the true cost of their website.
- The haven't set measurable goals for the website.
- Where there are goals they are not always monetizing the results.
Today I will go over the basics - things you need to know to measure the value of your website. Then, we will look at the tools you can use to increase that return.
We will start with the basics. Running a website is a process – not a “one shot deal”:
- set measurable goals for your website.
- set a budget
- build or update your website
- measure the results
- repeat
Have some idea on the websites goals and a working budget before you hire a web designer. You may not be able to achieve all your goals within your budget. However, a web designer is going to give you a much better deal if they know that you are going to be coming back to add more features than if they think they will never see you again.
Setting Measurable Goals [handout] There are any number of reasons for having a website. However, websites really only do three things. They can inform or communicate; they can entertain; or they can market and sell.
I put inform and communicate as a single item. Many websites just inform. This is enough for many small businesses. The information ranges basic contact info to those with product information. It is what you would expect to see in a brochure - hence they have become known as 'brochure sites'.
Newer sites try to communicate with their visitors. They give the visitor the opportunity to leave feedback through simple forms, and online chats to actual conversations with sales or support staff.
Except for online games and porn sites, you may think entertainment doesn't have much room on business site. However, for some sites, putting up entertainment is a way of promoting their product. Done right it is a way of getting other people to promote your product.
Probably the best example of this is the videos of Danny MacAskill posted by Inspired Bicycles Ltd. The videos have gone viral and been posted on websites around the world. And, if you are interested in bikes you have probably seen this video, even though Inspired Bicycles is a relatively small regional bike manufacturer.
Marketing and selling are the two sides of the same coin. Unfortunately many people think they are both on the same side.
So - if you don't know the difference here it is - Marketing is everything you do to connect with your customer. Sales is everything you do to answer your customers questions and lead them to a desired action.
If you are Nike, 'Just Do It' is marketing, and when the clerk says “We have that shoe in your size” it is sales.
Your website should do both. In most cases the customer enters the website on the marketing pages and continue to the part of the website with the sales information. Both parts have equal value - marketing gets people to the site - sales gets them to take the desired action.
I have said sales is getting the visitor to the website to take a desired action. That action is your websites goal. It can be anything, and your site can have more than one desired action or goal. The most obvious action is purchasing a product, but it isn't the only one. In fact it is the least common action. Other actions may include downloading a brochure, asking for more information or even visiting a particular page. Actions even include non web related actions such as getting customers to visit your store.
One other goal that is often overlooked is using your website to track your print or broadcast advertising. You have all seen ads on the TV that say "Visit our website www.greatstuff.com/tv for more information." Creating a separate page that is just advertised on the TV or newspaper is a great way of enhancing your broadcast advertising. It also lets you measure the effectiveness of the advertising.
Setting a budget
I am often asked "How much does it cost to put up a website?"
I don't know.
How much does a car cost? Do you want a Kia or a Ferrari?
I have seen low budget sites that have amazing returns and I know of sites costing many hundreds of thousands of dollars that have tanked. The one thing I can tell you is the smallest part of the True Cost of Ownership of a website is design and hosting. And, the more you spend on getting the design right - the better your chances of getting a good ROI.
Some of the things that add to the cost of ownership are the time spent on updating the site and answering emails. Product pictures and videos can far exceed the basic cost of the website design. And, don't forget you will need to add your website address to all your stationary, business cards and advertising copy.
But, by far the biggest single cost of a poorly designed website is lost sales.
Lost sales are hard to put a number on. It is even possible for a company to continue for years without realizing how much they are losing. And one of the biggest causes of lost sales are your online forms.
The worst case due to a problem with a form design is known in the industry as the "$300 million dollar button". (You can Google that if you want.) That time the design problem caused an estimated $300 million dollars in lost sales. People were abandoning their purchase because they were being asked to register an account with the company before they could checkout.
There are a number of ways of determining a budget for your website, and, your business plan will be your guide. Answer some basic questions:
- Is the website part of your part of your advertising budget or is it part of the way you do business - your operational budget?
- Is it expected to generate revenue, if so how much?
- Is used to generate leads - how much is a new lead worth?
By answering these sort of questions you can start to get an idea of how much you should budget for your website.
A small business that just wants to advertise their business with a 'brochure' site could budget as low as $800, and may even get a site for less. This is great value compared to the cost of a full page ad in the local newspaper or the cost of a half page in the Yellow Pages. However, don't commit your entire advertising budget – you still need to promote your website.
For web sites generating leads or sales you need to estimate the value of the sale or lead to your business. For new sites you will need an educated guess at the number of expected sales or leads. From your business plan you will have some idea on the value of an average sale or lead. This information will give you some idea of the value of your website.
Basically, all the research you would do before investing your money in a bricks and mortar business applies online.
One number to keep in mind is the average conversion rate for online sales is 2%. That means, on average, for every 100 visitors you will get 2 sales. The number is higher where the sale is something small, such as downloading a brochure, and smaller for big ticket sales.
Measuring Success
It doesn't matter how much you paid for your website, if it isn't meeting your goals it is a waste of money. And, the only way you can tell if it is meeting the goals is to measure the results.
However, the very first thing you need to do is a usability test. You need to make sure the site isn't broken in some unexpected fashion. And, you need to do this each time you make a major change to your website.
Fortunately, it is easy to do. You will need 5 friends who are not familiar with you website. Ask them to find a specific piece of information and to either request more information or to order a product. Things that a visitor to your site might do. Then watch them – don't help them. What problems did they have?
Fix those problems!
Now we can measure results!
We use Google Analytics on all our client's websites. There are others that are as good, there are some that are better – Google is free, so you can't beat the price. Also, Google Analytics has tie-ins with other Google services.
First I want to show you what you don't want to see.
This was sent out as part of an online directories promotional material to potential advertisers.
Unfortunately, this type of report is all many sites show. It was the best we had in the mid 1990's – but now it has little value.
Just a quick explanation on what was being measured. Notice that 'Hits' is far higher that 'Pages'. Every web page is made up of a number of files. These range from files that tell the browser how to display the page to images on the page. As each one of those is loaded onto you browser it generates a 'Hit' – so one page can generate 10, 15, 20 or more hits.
There is no context for the numbers. How long did visitors stay on the site, which pages did they visit, where are they coming from and how many were people like me – who keep hitting the refresh button to watch the page hit counter click over.
Google Analytics
(Access to TIMR analytics has been removed)
Lets look at two figures. The first is “Visits” in the “Site Usage” report and the second is “Visitors” in the “Visitors Overview”. You will notice the “Visits” is much higher than the “Visitors” - “Visitors” is the number of new visitors to the site. That is the number of unique visits the site in the last 30 days. “Visits” counts the total number of visits to the site. “Page Views” is the same as “Pages” in the previous hand out – but since I now know the number of visitors – I can see at least some of the visitors viewed more than one page.
So we are starting to get context for the numbers.
One number you should pay attention to is the “Bounce Rate”. One of the guru's of web analytics, Avinash Kaushik, defines Bounce Rate as “I came, I puked, I left”. It is a measure of how many people left the web page almost as soon as it opened. In this case we are seeing the site average. The lower the number the better – 30% to 60% is average.
To see how individual pages perform click “Content” in the left menu bar. Then go to “Top Content”. This shows you a breakdown of how all the pages are performing.
I am going to leave this access to our analytics information up until next Monday – so you can log in from home and explore some of the other features
Some things you might want to look at is the Traffic Sources -> Referring Sites. This will tell you tell you where your referrals are from. Use it to track online advertising. Also Visitors -> Map Overlay . Use this to see where your visitors are from geographically. One slight note of caution Telus does not always identify Courtenay properly – it sometimes gets added into the Nanaimo total.
Just a quick word on assigning monetary values to actions. If you have a brochure and you know that for every 100 brochures you hand out you get a $100.00 sale – then you can assign a value of $1.00 for each downloaded brochure.
For your website to really be worth while, you need at least one measurable goal.
You can measure and assign a monetary value to anything the visitor does on your website. It can be a simple page view, or downloading a brochure. Even if you are just displaying product information – have a button to print that page and measure the number of print outs.
The Process
As you analyze your results you will see areas that need improvement and you will ask a lot of 'what if' questions. Lets look at the “What ifs” first.
- What if I changed the menu order?
- What if I move a button higher on the page?
All those types of things can be tested. We recommend using A/B testing. That is using two variations of the same page, changing only one thing at a time. Show half of your sites visitors one version and half the other and tracking the results. By changing one thing at a time you can slowly optimize your page.
And, of course, all this can be setup in various Google Analytics.
Choosing a Web Designer
If you have a good working relationship with your web designer – stay with them.
There are a number of good local web designers. You can see a few of them at the CV Posse website. CV Posse is a development group for local designers and web developers. Come to one of our meetings. You may find the meeting a bit technical and there is a $5.00 cover to pay for the room – but you will get to meet a number of designers.
Look at the designers portfolio – get a sense of their style. Does their style match your vision of what you want your site to say? Interview them – are they interested in your company and you ideas? This should be a long term relationship – so treat it as such.
Don't rush into it.
One word of caution. Anyone can say they do SEO – the is only one other local company that I know that does good SEO is MasterMynde. In Victoria, StepForth Web Marketing not only does excellent work but their website has a lot of useful information. And, in Campbell River – check out the work of Creative Chameleon, excellent design work and some SEO.
There are probably others – I just don't know their work.
If you want a web designer to do SEO, expect to pay a bit extra. To see how good they are at SEO, check their clients sites against these SEO handouts. [ hand out SEO ]
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is changing almost weekly. And, there are two things you need to be aware of. First searches on Google are geo-targeted. That means doing the same search in Courtenay and Victoria will yield different results. This is particularly true for goods and services – such restaurant.
Second, Google is now using “Personal Search” for all searches. This means if you search for the same term a number of times – the page you visit most for that search will start to appear higher in the ranking.
