1. Conversions – This is the completion of a goal on the website. Ex: Filling out an online form, Signing up for a newsletter, Contacting someone by email, etc.
2. Website Traffic – The number of visits to your site and how they got there.
• Organic Traffic – Visits that came from someone who found us in the search engine results. (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Aol, etc.)
• Referral Traffic – These are visitors that originated on another site but clicked on a link that brought them to our site. It could be a link in the content, a banner image, blogroll, etc. However, referral traffic can also be search engine traffic if it’s a small engine. The way GA filters our search from referral is from a list google specifies.
• Direct Traffic – These are visitors who typed your domains url into the address bar and came directly to the site. It also includes visits that come via a bookmark.
3. Time on Site – This is the AVERAGE time visitors spend on your site. On a sidenote, I read a report from CBS news that the average time spent on a page is 33 seconds.
4. Bounce Rate – This is the percent of people that come to a page and don’t visit any other page on the site.
5. Unique Visitors – This is number of people who came to the site.
6. Visits – This refers to the number of times the site was visited. This number is always higher than the number of unique visitors because a visitor can visit the site more than once. Does that make sense?

So there you have it. I hope those help to clear up any questions you have about terms we use when talking about web analytics. Feel free to leave us any other questions you have in the comment section and we’ll be sure to answer those as well!

I am officially 20% done with my internship at Beacon Technologies. I have learned a copious amount of information. I am glad to have Richard as a mentor for this internship. I have already learned a lot from just him only in 2 weeks. The Beacon NetCafe event is coming along nicely. I have researched Google Hangouts and believe I can make it work for the event. I have also looked at websites that offer webinars to see the best features of their websites to determine what to use and not use for the Beacon NetCafe website. A meeting with web development will be important next week.

We had a web marketing meeting this week. It is important to determine customers when creating a marketing plan. This is vital for any company using or not using a website. The previous week I sat in on a meeting for one of our clients. It was difficult to determine who the company was trying to market to for their products. This should always be the first question any company should ask after determining the product and/or service they want to offer in the marketplace. Who will actually buy or use this product? Who will actually buy or use this service? It seems like a basic concept but many business people don’t even realize who their customers are in the marketplace. Many people have the mentality of “if we build it, they will come!” but this is not the case. As for Beacon NetCafe, we determined that the objective for the event will be to extend expertise in the marketplace. The primary customers will be partners, their clients, and our clients, but it will be open to any person in the world with internet. This is significant when determining a marketing plan. For the event, we will leverage our partnerships and I will look into local business journals for promotion of this event. So always keep in mind  who you are selling to because this is just as important as creating a great product or service!

We are excited to attend the upcoming IRCE Conference in Chicago. The 8^th annual Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibitions is expected to bring in more than 7,500 e-retailing executives who are going to learn the latest practices and tools for connecting with the 21^st Century consumer. There will be over 175 speakers and 100 separate sessions all talking about such topics as boosting conversions and profitability, e-marketing, social media, mobile commerce, web merchandising, improving back-end operations, and much more.

Beacon will be exhibiting in booth #313 at the conference and offering free 20 minute one-on-one consults with Brad Henry, Beacon’s Director of Digital Strategy. If you are experiencing declining or stalling results, are seeing your search engine rankings slip, want more conversions from your website, feel your PPC is getting to expensive to justify or not sure what to do with social media, we’d like to help answer your questions using our proven SMAART approach for digital marketing.

Please register here to reserve your spot today! Once we receive your request, we’ll be in touch with your confirmed time and location for your consultation. We will also include instructions on how you can prepare so you can get the most out of your meeting.

Brad Henry is a 10-year veteran of web marketing and drives Beacon Technologies’ unique SMAART Approach in providing ROI-based digital marketing strategies and consultation to corporations across the country. He directs a large team of marketing specialists to grow businesses via custom developed strategic plans and by leveraging Beacon’s other in-house IT strengths (development, hosting). Brad holds a B.S. in Business Administration (Marketing) from the University of North Carolina – Charlotte. He also speaks at conferences and is one of the most active contributors on the Google Analytics Partner Forum over the last 6 years.

Brad’s primary objective is to help you get more from your website and web marketing initiatives by giving you actionable takeaways. To make best use of this time, he will initially focus on your main areas of concern before providing insights and feedback relative to Analytics, SEO, PPC, Social Media and/or email – as time permits.

So my first week at Beacon Technologies is coming to a close, and I have not been scared off yet! Everyone is very nice and welcoming at this company. I look forward to working with the Beacon team for the next 9 weeks. So far I have been mostly planning for the implementation of Beacon NetCafe and I have been stuck in my cubicle getting prepared for that, but next week will be the week where the fun starts for me. I will start working with others to get the Beacon NetCafe up and running for the company. I am excited and a little nervous. I have never done anything like this before, but I am more than willing to learn the ropes. I did get to sit in a meeting about web design and development my first week.

A client is getting about 70 visitors a day but absolutely no sales at all. What is the problem? Could it be the product? Could it be the website design? Could it be both? The Beacon team brainstormed to come up with ideas to improve sales. Ultimately, the product and the target customers were lacking but one immediate change that the company could utilize was changing the website. There were various problems with the website. The returns and shipping policy was at the top of the page. Is the company trying to say they expect returns of their products? This should not have been on the top of the page. The Terms and Conditions were also at the top of the page when it would have sufficed to be at the bottom. What a waste of space! The products weren’t even on the page. It was confusing what the website was even selling. The team recommended having a 5 product rotating link in the top middle of the page. The product links would also link straight to the cart to increase the chances of actually making a sale. Branding was also an issue for the company. The company was trying to take a serious life event and make it cheerful and upbeat but the website did not display this effectively. The website could also have funny links or products to at least liven the atmosphere and make a sale. A color change is a must for the website. The top image could also be changed to make the website for appealing to the visitors.

Either way, I learn A LOT on web design and branding of a website. It is the little things about web design and branding that can make a HUGE difference. A company can have the greatest product in the world but not sell one if the website is in bad shape. I am confident that if these changes are made to the website then the chances of making a sale will increase significantly. It seems like common sense when people bring up these things but could easily be looked over by anyone. There were some things at the meeting I didn’t even think about. I was very impressed at the meeting. There are extremely intelligent people working for Beacon Technologies, and I want to learn everything I can from these people during my 10 weeks here!

It will soon be a year since the massive update to Google Analytic’s dashboard and reporting interface. And while the grumbling over what was lost and what can’t be found has settled a bit, there are still certain features in GA that we are accustomed to seeing but don’t now. And one of the biggest, in my mind, is the lack of clear, absolute numbers for goal completions. Now mind you, I am aware you can still access this under conversions, but it was so much easier when back in the day, you used to see this on the Overview page:

Now, instead, you see this:

So, for the sake of simplicity and seeing everything in one spot, I took matters into my own hands and created a custom report to suit my needs. Doing so is quite easy.

1. Click on “Custom Reports” in the top orange bar.
2. Click “Overview” and then “New Custom Report.”
3. Go ahead and name your report and tabs.
4. Then, when it comes to “+add metric”, begin typing in the name of your goal and when you see it, select the option with “completions” in the parenthesis.
5. Continue adding more metrics until you’ve created a perfect report showing all goal completions for the goals you need. You can even add in conversion rate too, if you’d like, to get the whole picture.
6. Fill in Dimensions and the optional Filters (I hate these on custom reports–very inaccurate) and the Profiles you’d like to show this report in.
7. Click save and you’re done!

  Now review your report and marvel at its awesome, custom simplicity and the time it will save you. And if you’re not marveling at it, click “Edit” to make adjustments. Here’s an example of my final report:

Hope this helps! Andrea

I checked out Insights for Search and was a little confounded about what I saw  for some industry terms.

• “web marketing” search volume is trending down
• “internet marketing” search volume is trending down
• “search engine marketing” search volume is trending down

Take a look at “web marketing” in Insights:

Click to Enlarge

And, according to analysts covering Google’s recent earning miss:

Google’s core search business slowed more sharply than expected, even in the U.S.

They merely shift the spending from the PC to the mobile device.

• In January 2011, one client example had almost 4,000 visits resulting from mobile devices.
• In January 2012, that same client example had almost 13,00 visits resulting from mobile devices

Click to Enlarge

2. SEO

People are becoming more savvy about search marketing. Search behavior is changing and more specific terms are being used compared to a few years ago as searches are becoming more focused. Businesses have recognized the importance of ranking well for their brand name and for relevant search queries.

Check out the trend below for “seo marketing”:

Click to Enlarge

3. Social Media Marketing

No need to explain this one.

Click to Enlarge

In their recent earnings, Google has seen the shift to mobile make its impact.  Companies have to adapt as visitor behavior changes. Developing a search strategy that fully realizes the search behavior of your potential customers is paramount in adapting to the fast moving online world.

“Web Marketing” is still stronger than ever but the name of the game has changed. Its become fractured into smaller and smaller sub-segments.

Giving web marketing advice is not always an easy endeavor. Let’s be honest, sometimes it is hard to be good in this game. But if you find yourself in a pickle with a client and have no idea what to tell them, fear not: Just use the button below to generate a random statement of web marketing advice that is sure to wow them. And if you don’t get what you want the first time, feel free to keep clicking until you get exactly what you need. 60% of the time, this works EVERY TIME!

I am going to preface this post with something that I really should not have to say:  You need to be tracking your web-based inbound phone calls.  If you are not aware of how many calls/leads your website is generating for you, then you have no idea of the true ROI of your website.  Phone tracking is best done by creating a unique number that is available only on the website – this way you know that any calls to that specific number were generated by users who viewed the website.  You do not need a call center or a huge phone plan to do this.  You can get these unique numbers (along with increased tracking features like volume, caller length, and even caller ID) from great companies like IfByPhone that offer these services for very affordable rates.

For most of my clients, it is also critical to track not just volume, but volume by source.  That is, how many calls came from organic, PPC, specific referrals, etc?  The best way to do this is by using dynamic phone tracking.  With dynamic phone tracking, different numbers are displayed to different web visitors depending on the source of each user.  Some companies, like IfByPhone, offer this code as part of their services (others do not), but most have limitations as to how many numbers you can dynamically track on a page at one time.  This does not work for me, as I often need to track local & 1-800 numbers for every page.

No worries, I have written a bit of JavaScript that solves this problem.

First, a few caveats:

1) You must have at least one trackable phone number available to you.

2) This script only works with tagged links.  That means you have to put your parameter on the inbound link to your site.

3) This script is session based.  This means that user will only see this number the first time they come the source (i.e. PPC) you want to track.  If they come from a different source the next time (i.e. direct or organic), they will not see the same dynamically generated number that they did the first time.

4) This script will not work if the user goes to a page through a redirect.

Please note that items #2 thru #4 are not impossible to alter, just a little more complicated than the script I am giving you here.  Feel free to contact Beacon or myself with any questions if you would like to delve deeper.  If you doNow, without further ado…

Begin by placing the following JavaScript in either as a script in your HTML head or as a referenced external .js file.

var current_page = document.URL; var sourceConfirm = current_page.indexOf(“?source-track”);

var phone_num=”XXX-XXX-XXXX”; if (paidConfirm != -1) { document.cookie = “Track this Source”; } else { }

var cookieCheck=document.cookie.indexOf(“Track this Source”);

if (cookieCheck != -1) { phone_num=”YYY-YYY-YYYY”; } else { }

Replace “?source-track” with whatever parameter you are using to tag the inbound link with.  Replace XXX-XXX-XXXX with your default number.   Replace YYY-YYY-YYYY with the variable number that you would like tracked.

Next, where you want the number to display, place:

<script>phone_num</script>

And that is it.  Your default number will display for all users except for those who come to the site via the tagged link.

Merry Christmas!

- EW, follow me on twitter @ejwestksu

Google has now launched Google+ Pages for businesses and brands. It’s a great way to help reach your audience. They are also adding this new setup into their search results, giving the end-user a more meaningful connection to what they are looking for.

With this option of social media marketing it can be great marketing tool for the businesses. We currently help our clients with all their social media marketing needs and this will be another great step to help them reach their targeted audience.

You can learn more about Google+ Pages by clicking here.

So you or your company is now enjoying a few or many social media networks. Now what? Analyze it guys! Use the data to learn from the users that interact on your profiles. Don’t guess; get the facts and stats to keep improving your conversions and levels of engagement. Listed below are a few options that can help.

For the Larger Companies:

• Radian6 is a salesforce.com company that continues to grow and gain viability.  Their packages start at $600 a month.
• Sprout Social has packages that range from $9 to $49 a month.
• Buddy Media works with customers like Ford, Sony, and Bose.  Their pricing is based on the separate products they have.

For the Smaller Companies:

• HootSuite starts with a free package for the beginners.
• Argyle Social has packages that range from $199 to $899.
• Postling has a special running right now $1 for the first 30 days- no strings attached.

And remember, we are always here to help. Just fill out our contact form or #AskBT us on Twitter.