If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! The web stats you should be looking for and analysing are …..
- No of Unique visitors
- No of visits = returning visitors
- Where visitors are coming from
- Length of time spent on your site – goal = 2 minutes
- No of Page Views – which pages are being viewed more often; where are your visitors exiting – fix these pages, particularly if it’s the call to action page – eg buying, downloading, etc
- Bounce rate = visitors landing and clicking away quickly – needs to be low. High = there’s something wrong with your site eg taking too long to download; not what was expected eg incorrect keywords used (misleading); difficult to navigate; too busy, etc
You can get this information from …..
- your webhost
- access to a control panel from your webhost; or
- sign up to Google Analytics for free and insert the code onto your site.
I use a control panel together with Google Analytics because the results will be more accurate. The control panel pulls the web stats from all the search engines, whereas Google Analytics pulls only the web stats from Google. However, if you don’t have access to a control panel, you can rely on the Google Analytics web stats because Google, being the largest search engine, can give you valuable indications.
Wit my control panel, I have all the information I’ve mentioned plus the days and times when visitors are on my site – which is very helpful when timing my email marketing campaigns.
I’d love to have your input and questions … as I’m sure many others would, so let’s have your comments below.
To your continued success!
It won’t be long before South Africa follows the US and Europe in introducing new laws to combat spam, porn and other ‘undesirable’ websites.
To help you become legal, I’ve set up files which you can download and amend with your details. These you can find here.
But remember, these documents are not a substitute for legal or other professional advice. Consult an attorney to address specific legal issues and your financial planner and certified public accountant to discuss specific financial and tax issues.
If you’d like to see where to insert this legal info, have a look at these 2 options:
www.marketingtactics.co.za – in the navigation bar; or
www.inspectaweb.com – in the footer
The documents you should have, non-negotiable, are:
Privacy Policy
Antispam Policy
Terms and Conditions of Use
I like to include a Disclaimer and because most of my sites usually sell affiliate products or generate some form of revenue, I have to include Disclosure of Material Connection.
I recommend you include your own terms and conditions for doing business with your Company.
Lastly, remember – Don’t forget to always have an UNSUBSCRIBE link for any commercial emails you’re sending. If you don’t have software like AWeber or Getresponse to automate this process, then make sure you manually remove the unsubscribers from your mailing lists. If you don’t do this and there are enough complaints from unhappy recipients, your ISP can or will shut you down – so goodbye emails and website!
To your continued success
Your communication bill is often unnecessarily large. Using Skype is one of the easiest ways to shave your overhead expenses without cutting back on your calls.
Now before you complain about being technically challenged, wake up! If a 60+ grandmother can work this with ease, so can you!
Firstly, go to www.skype.com and download Skype onto your computer. Next you’ll need a microphone – this is optional because you can use the ‘chat’ facility, like email but you’re online responding to each other immediately - and a webcam – again this is optional but if you want to be seen by the person you’re talking to or want to demonstrate a product or plan or document, you’ll need one.
Finally, go and look for contacts. You can get connected via their Skype name or via their telephone or cellphone – however you’ll pay for these calls but I’ve found this to be less than using Telkom.
Communicating from one Skype user to another is free from anywhere in the world. You don’t have to leave your desk or home. Imaging how much you can save on travel and airtime.
You can also control incoming ‘calls’, if you don’t want to be disturbed.
But for me. I have watched my grandkids growing up as my daughter has lived in the UK, Germany, Cyprus and now in Saudi Arabia. When we meet up at airports, my grand kids know me already – there’s no shyness. So other than touching them, I have still been a major part of their lives.
Life is all about relationships – get connected – if you have an internet connection, there’s no excuse not to use Skype.
If you need help to be walked though downloading Skype, leave your comments below and I’ll walk you through doing this.
To your online success
Let’s go and check this out, do yourself a favour and go to www.alexa.com. Then type in your URL (domain name) and see what your ranking is.
Think of a book, when Google is 1 (page 1), Facebook is 2 (page 2), YouTube is 3 (page 3), Twitter is 9 (page 9), eBay is 20 (page 20), Amazon is 11 (page 11) etc; you’ll know that if your site is in the millions – you’re a long way from the first page in Google’s book!
To have any chance of getting onto Google’s first page, you need to be ranking well under 500,000. This is not difficult to do when you apply a couple of simple techniques – like inserting metatags; inserting relevant keywords throughout your content; and getting links to your site from relevant authority sites.
The biggest drop in ranking that you’ll ever experience will be inserting a Blog into your website – this turns your ‘dead’ site (Web 1.0) into a ‘living’, dynamic, interactive entity (Web 2.0) which Google absolutely loves! Making your website as a blog – check out www.marketingtactics.co.za to see how this looks – would be your first prize!
Your online sustainable success depends ENTIRELY on keywords, content and links. Your aim must be to “own” the topic that your site relates to on the Internet.
Now, whilst you’re in Alexa, check who’s linking to you. Insert their URL’s into Alexa and if they have a low ranking – great – because you’re ‘piggy-backing’ on their traffic success and Google will see this. You could also have irrelevant sites linking to you, which can penalise you too! If this is the case, send an email to the Webmaster of this URL and kindly ask them to delete their link to you.
Something else to check, either through Google Analytics and/or your web stats is to see how many UNIQUE visitors you receive – subtract this figure from the TOTAL visitors. This will give you an indication of how many visitors RETURN to your site. You also need to check how many page views, how long visitors stay on your site and the bounce rate. Forget about ‘Hits’!
If you have any questions, just ask by leaving a comment below, so that more people can share the knowledge via the comment threads.
Caio for now!
Imagine typing in your website’s URL into your browser and you get an error message or your emails suddenly stop coming through …. How will this impact your business?
Make sure this doesn’t happen to you by simply ensuring the ownership of your domain is yours. If you have a .co.za domain, go to http://co.za and if you have a .com domain, go to www.whois.sc.
In the results, look for the name of the “Registrant” – this must be either your name or your Company’s name – non-negotiable! If this is anyone else’s name, you have a potential problem because that person/organization can shut you down immediately – particularly if you have a fall-out!
You can’t even move your domain anywhere else, unless you are the Registrant – it’s that important.
The other recommendation is that you control the “Billing”. You only have to pay R50 per year (.co.za) or about $10 per year (.com) to Uniforum or your .com registrar. In this way, you ensure your domain doesn’t get suspended for non-payment.
The administration and technical areas can be left in the control of someone else.
Now, if you need to get the Registrant name changed, send off a VERY polite email to the registered Registrant and ask for the change to be done – hopefully he/she is still in business! If you get no joy, dig in your heels and make this happen.
One major client of mine, thought they were safe – until their website went down. Then they discovered that they weren’t the Registrant, their web hosting had changed and their domain had not been renewed. It was a .com domain and someone ‘bought’ the domain when it became available – yes, there are ‘scaly’ people lurking on the internet. To cut a long story short, it cost my client over $90 to buy back the domain name and it took 3 months to get back on line. The loss in earnings were affected by this.
So you are warned – don’t be too trusting. You can go directly to Uniforum or a reputable .com domain registrar, like Aplus.net (the one I’ve used for a few years) or Register.com, to register your domain name. You don’t need a third party to do this.
By the way, it’s advisable to have a unique domain name ie not john@mweb.co.za or pam@telkomsa.net. Mweb or Telkom can still host your unique domain name. Tell the marketplace what you do in your domain name eg info@marketingtactics.co.za or info@womensgolfstuff.com!
I’d love to have your input and questions … as I’m sure many others would, so let’s have your comments below.
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