General Business

Google Analytics - An Overview

Back in April, 2005, Google acquired “Urchin Software Corp” a company renowned for it’s web analytics software. Since then, Google has continued developing and expanding upon the software, which comes to you today in the form of  “Google Analytics”.  Google analytics is powerful software, it’s free of charge, and it produces comprehensive statistics about the visitors to your website, making it an important marketing tool.

Google Analytics can track how someone has found your site, whether they’ve come from a link on another website, whether they’ve come from an online add, what search engine they have used, the keyword phrase they typed into the search engine to find your site and much more. It’s a fantastic marketing tool because you can use it to really measure results on your website. You can find out what pages are most popular, what keywords are bringing in the traffic, what pages visitors are leaving your site from, how long they are spending on each page and so much more.

Another great thing about Google Analytics is that although there are many features, and some very in-depth day by day reports, the main points are displayed in a user friendly “Dashboard”. The Dashboard is great for beginners to the program, as seen below it displays the main points someone would want to know about the traffic to a website. From there, you can view detailed reports, see which links are being used the most, and more useful tips like that. Note that all these sections have a “View Report” section, which is far more information.

How can you get Google Analytics for your website? All you need is a google account, and some tracking code placed on your website pages. Contact us if you would like help setting this up.

Note: Most actual stats and percentages have blanked out.

I’m sure you’ve heard of Tourism Queensland’s ‘Best job in the world’ campaign by now - $150,000 for a six-month stint as caretaker on the Great Barrier Reef’s Hamilton Island.

What’s involved? Key responsibilities include snorkeling, swimming, exploring neighboring islands and wildlife and reporting back to the world on your adventures via a blog and video diary… Sounds too good to be true? It’s not - this is a genuine job advertisement.

How do you apply? Send a short video explaining why you’re the best person for the job.

This is a brilliant viral marketing campaign that has gained enormous exposure across the globe since it’s official launch just 10 days ago in 18 countries. Since then, over 2000 video applications have been received and it is expected that more than 10,000 people will have applied by the February 22 cut-off date. The hype that has been generated appears to have even taken Tourism Queensland by surprise - the flood of visitors applying for the job caused the official website islandreefjob to crash on Wednesday.

They couldn’t have got the timing any better either - with bleak wintery conditions across much of Europe and the United States coupled with an even bleaker financial outlook, who could resist a dream job on a tropical island?  This is a really great example of viral marketing (’word of mouth’). Whilst a lot of money was invested to kick start this campaign (with a fantastic website and an international launch) - it was viral marketing that really made the difference.

So how can you use viral marketing for your business?

1. Make sure your customers enjoy a positive shopping experience.
   Perhaps this goes without saying, but people talk. Some statistics tell us that a user will tell around 12 people about their online shopping experience. This is viral marketing in action - you want to ensure your users enjoy a positive shopping experience and spread the word.
   
   
2. Offer incentives to your customers to refer their friends
   If you offer an incentive, there’s an even better chance that your customers will remember to refer you to others.

Over the years Google has out done itself again and again, starting out as a simple search engine, and quickly more useful features were added. Most people would agree Google maps was one of the most ground breaking achievements to date. Now with the addition of “Street View”, Google has made this spectacular feature all the more useful.

What is Google Street View?

Google street view gives users the ability to change from a normal Google Maps view (if you have not used this before, it can be accessed here), to seeing the street in a virtual 360 degree view. This feature is excellent for people who want to plan ahead on trips, as you can see exactly what a location looks like before you have been there. Is it also a lot of fun to use as a virtual tour function. There are plenty of online websites with national land marks to view, as well as strange, amazing, and very exotic places.

Below shows where the street view button is located on Google maps.

While Blogs and RSS feeds are not news to us here at Kintek (we’ve been making them for other people for years) we really only recently started to practice what we preach, so to speak.

If the idea of blogging is new to you, or you were under the impression it was only used by people to complain about movies - then think again. Blogs are one of the most powerful ways to deliver news and information to your clients or target market and many companies are just beginning to fully grasp the importance of this. Blogs encourage you to make frequent, relevant updates to your site, and will help make you a leading authority and useful resource in the eyes of Google. Needless to say, this is a good thing.

One of the most useful aspects of blogs is the way in which they allow syndication via RSS. Put simply, this means users can subscribe to your blog and get your latest posts delivered to their inbox as if it were mail. This helps you keep in constant contact with your customers/readers. This also needs no explanation of the benefits.

So, what can you do? If you are already a Kintek customer and are using a blog, we will happily provide an RSS feed for you (and submit it to a few directories). After all, what is good for our customers can only be good for us - the reason we work so hard to make our customer’s sites a success.

If you want to get a blog integrated into your existing site, you may be surprised by the price. We can custom build your blog from scratch to ensure it meets your needs exactly.

Still not sure whether blogging is for you? Check out the post by Peter Newsome from Sitemost entitled Why aren’t you blogging?. If that doesn’t convince you, nothing will!

Here are some interesting statistics that give us food for thought…

Why we lose customers

‘Perceived indifference’ is when customers feel that you don’t care about them; that they don’t matter to your business and that you couldn’t really care less whether they purchase from you or not.

It is the single most common reason we lose our customers to our competitors. Perceived indifference sends our customers away nearly 5 times more often than dissatisfaction with a product or service and over 7 times more often than for competitive reasons. Clearly, we need to pay far more attention to our attitude towards our customers.

We often assume that our customers’ key concern is price - little do we realise that we can differentiate ourselves and win over our customers time and time again by simply demonstrating that we value them.

As in all relationships: communication is key. We need to let our customers know that we care. Ask them for feedback, reward them and think about other ways in which we can meet their needs.

These statistics are provided by Prof John Gattorna - Macquarie University.