John Borkowski, April 18, 2012
Tons of resources are regularly devoted toward evaluating the strength of business sales strategies. Evaluation and implementation play integral roles in the strength of the strategy and there are methods businesses can use to refine their message. Analytics potentially provide the most effective evaluation and illustrate measures that other tools simply cannot. Below are 4 ways website analytics can help businesses refine their sales strategy:
Traffic Source
Analytics show where website traffic stems from. Paying close attention to the originating source provides great detail as to what sites are referring you traffic. Traffic may come from a recent article your company was mentioned in, organic / natural search engine results, online ad, banner ad, pay per click initiative, etc. Knowing the root traffic will help you evaluate and target your sales message accordingly. For example, if you’re gaining tremendous traffic from a banner ad on Entrepreneur magazine, perhaps small business owners and Entrepreneurs are a focus for your sales message.
Time spent on site and bounce rate
TOS illustrates how engaging and informative your website is. Anything over :45 seconds is generally considered engaged, and bounce rate statistics will illustrate where they leave. If consumers are spending a limited amount of time and leaving, your site is lacking engagement. This helps when trying to capture leads and create conversions on your sales side of the site.
Geographic region
This will illustrate where people are located and visiting your site. If you are trying to capture a certain geographic market, perhaps reevaluate your sales message to that region. Other words, if you’re selling homeowners insurance in the north-east, start discussing the upcoming hurricane season and consider offering this type of insurance as that will attract traffic from that geographic region.
Operating system
Often overlooked, this has become a major focus with the adoption of mobile devices including tablets and smartphones. This will show what types of devices are being used to view your page. If you’re gaining tons of traffic from iOS (Apple) or droid (Android) devices, it is clear you will want to restructure your sales message to target mobile / fast-pace consumers. Operating systems are often overlooked but with the evolution in these devices, this becomes one of the most important factors.
