You Can Use Google Analytics To Power Your Marketing Efforts Ways:

Google Analytics is the world’s most popular web analytics application, used by almost every other webmaster. According to SimilarTech, almost 61% of the top 1 million websites (Alexa rankings) use Google Analytics.

However, most webmasters don’t use Google Analytics to its full potential. Studies indicate that almost 80% of ecommerce retailers use Google Analytics incorrectly. Viewing daily traffic stats, page views and traffic sources is a very basic way of using Google Analytics.

As a webmaster, you can use it in a much more advanced manner and derive extremely useful insights that can be used to fine tune your traffic strategy and marketing campaigns.

In this post, I’ll discuss a few ways you can use the information generated by Google Analytics to improve your website’s content, fine tune your SEO structure and generate more traffic.

1) Increase Organic Traffic with SEO Queries and Landing Page Reports

One of the main objectives of tracking your website analytics is to identify loopholes and find ways to attract more traffic. In Google Analytics, you can do this monitoring the SEO queries and Landing Page reports.

But you first need to integrate your Google Analytics account with yourGoogle Webmaster Tools account. Once both these tools are integrated, you can see the top performing SEO queries for your website that are getting the highest impressions on search engines.

Here’s what you should do.

• Use the SEO report within Google Analytics to see keyword ranking, clicks and impressions for your website.
• Sort the keyword list by the number of impressions, and look for the highest impression keywords.
• These are keywords for which you are already ranking well on Google search. You just need to improve the click through rate (CTR) for these keywords to increase your traffic.

To improve the CTR of these high impression keywords,

• Keep your page and post titles around 55 characters, and meta descriptions around 156 characters.
• Understand the context in which people search your high impression keywords, and then create content that is useful for those people. Create your content with the user’s intentions in mind and focus on benefit driven copy.

2) Increase Traffic With Keyword Report

To increase your website’s traffic by using the right keywords in your content, you can use the keyword report in Google Analytics. To access this report, go to Traffic Sources à Keyword Report.

Here’s you can find the top keywords that are driving traffic to your blog. If you focus on just the top 10 keywords bringing in the highest traffic, here’s how you can use them.

• Use them as alternate tags in the images on your website.
• Also use these keywords in the titles of the images on your website.
• Use the same high traffic keyword in your page title and description.
• Make these keywords a part of the anchor text of your internal website links. But make sure your keyword based anchors include other natural words as well. For example, instead of using the keyword “WordPress Themes” as anchor text, use “Here are some of the best WordPress Themes” as anchor text. This seems more natural.

Create more blog content using your high traffic keywords.

3) Drive More Traffic Using Referrals Report

Your website traffic can mainly be divided into three categories – organic search traffic, referral traffic and direct traffic.

To maximize your referral traffic, you can use the Traffic SourceàReferral report.

Find out the top websites that are sending traffic your way. Usually, your referrers fall in one or more of the following categories. Here’s what you can do with each one of them.

• Communities and Niche Forums: To maximize your traffic from communities and forums like Quora, Triberr, Reddit and other niche specific groups, you should spend more time replying to different discussion threads. Try helping people with your answers and focus on creating value. At the same time, share your own content wherever relevant.
• Blogs and Websites: If a blog sends you a lot of traffic, focus on building a relationship with its owner and explore more cross promotional opportunities. Link back to such blogs in your content, and regularly comment on their posts. Also, try contributing a few guest posts to such blogs.
• Social Media: Identify the social network that sends the most traffic your way. Identify the post structure that is working the best for you. Increase your posting frequency and replicate your successful posts for more traffic and engagement.

To improve the conversion rate of your referral traffic, you can create specific landing pages or customized messages for different referral sources. You can use tools like Hello Bar to do this.

4) Improve Blog Engagement Using the Content Overview Report

People visit your blog or website because of its content. If your content resolves their problems, answers their questions and helps them in any way, they’ll keep returning for more.

So it’s important to identify the content that is actually attracting the highest traffic. For this you can use the Content Overview Report in Google Analytics. Use it to find out your top performing content and identify trends from it.

Have a good look at the posts that are attracting the highest traffic. Identify any improvement areas and try to make them more comprehensive. At the same time, create new blog content that complements your popular content.

This will help you increase your reader engagement and the average user time on site.

5) Use the User Flow Report to Increase Conversions

One of the major objectives of attracting traffic to your website is to convert them into leads or subscribers. This conversion rate is even more important than your traffic numbers. To make sure that your traffic has a high conversion rate, you can use the Users Flow report in Google Analytics.

Here’s what you should do.

• Open the users flow report in Google Analytics.
• Narrow the report by traffic, source, location, device etc.
• To identify conversion loopholes, highlight traffic to a specific conversion page.
• Analyze the average user drop off point in the funnel from landing to conversion.

Once you’ve identified the weak link in your conversion funnel, you can improve conversions by doing the following

• Set up in page surveys at the high drop off points using tools like Qualaroo to find out why users are dropping off your website.
• Based on the feedback, set up A/B tests to address their objections.
• Identify other high drop off points in your conversion funnel and repeat the above steps on them to bring improvements.

6) Optimize Mobile User Experience

Traffic from mobile and smartphone users is increasing exponentially. You cannot ignore mobile users when creating a traffic strategy. To find out the mobile experience of your website, use the mobile report in Google Analytics.

The two factors you should focus on are bounce rate and time on site. If the bounce rate is high, you might need to make adjustments to your design and content. Also identify the devices that have the highest bounce rate to get a better understanding of the reasons behind the high bounce rate.

To start, make sure you’re using a responsive website design that adjusts according to the dimensions of the user’s device. Also try to identify where and why users are dropping off in your funnel. Run A/B tests to see what remedies work the best for you.

7) Use Audience Reports to Personalize Your Message

If you run an e-commerce store or sell products on your website, you can boost your conversion rates significantly by providing personalized user experiences. For this, you can use the audience reports in Google Analytics.

Using this report, try to identify content preferences of different audience segments on your website. You will most likely have multiple audience groups that are interested in specific content on your site.

Create personalized messages and experiences for such visitors and show them the products and services that they prefer. This is highly effective since almost 60% of ecommerce shoppers say they prefer purchasing from customized stores.

Wrapping It Up

Google Analytics is a highly advanced web analytics tool that can be used to derive extremely valuable insights from your website traffic. By using the different reports and statistics available in Google Analytics, you can identify the loopholes in your website design, content or structure, and make the necessary adjustments. If you know how to use this tool the right way, it can play a key role in helping you develop the right online marketing strategies for your website.

Read More»

How To Boost Your Ecommerce Sales With Effective Twitter Marketing:

Twitter is any marketer’s dream platform. With more than 284 million active monthly users and a monthly volume of more than 500 million Tweets, Twitter allows businesses of every size to monitor their target customers closely, engage them regularly and drive more sales.

For e-commerce businesses though, Twitter is a gold mine. If you know how to use this platform to your advantage, you can convert it into a major revenue generation channel for your e-commerce business. It’s not just about knowing the features that Twitter offers. It’s more about using those features to drive business value. And this is what I am going to tell you in this post.

1. Understand the Platform and Your Objective

Before diving deep, understand how Twitter can contribute to your business. Twitter is a fast moving micro blogging platform. It has given voice to common men and women around the world, who actively use it to engage with their friends, celebrities and their favorite brands.

It is not primarily an eCommerce platform, and people do not come here to buy and sell products. To take advantage of this powerful tool, you need to learn the rules of the game. Instead of trying to sell products all the time, you need to join conversations, build relationships, establish trust and then drive sales.

Don’t expect immediate results from it. It won’t open floodgates of revenue and traffic immediately. But once you establish yourself on it, and earn the trust of your followers, things will start happening.

2. Build a Strong Brand Image With Your Profile

Your objective on Twitter is to make sales. For this you need to establish trust by building a strong brand image. Your Twitter profile is a great place to start your branding activities.

• Twitter Handle: Use your company name. If it’s not available, add a number at the end. But try to keep it simple and easy to remember.
• Profile Picture: Use your company’s logo as the profile picture.
• Header Image: Use an image of your team or your office building as the header image. In this virtual space, showing your physical existence can really help you stand out. If you don’t have a physical existence, use an image that reflects your business.
• Bio: Twitter gives you 160 characters to describe yourself/your business. Use this space wisely. Without being too fancy, describe in clear words what your business is all about. Use the keywords that resonate with your target audience. For example, here’s how Kitchen Aid, a leading kitchenware portal, describe their profile.
  

• Location: For e-commerce websites, location often matters. So mention it clearly on your profile.

 3. Enable Twitter Cards For Product Pages

Twitter cards is a powerful Twitter feature that really comes handy for eCommerce websites. If enabled on your website, Twitter cards will show additional information when someone Tweets your product pages. The standard Tweets are limited to 140 characters, but Twitter cards expand that limit by showing a snippet of your product page that includes the product price and quantity in stock. This will simplify the buying process for your buyers and increase the probability of making sales.

4. Attract Followers the Smart Way

Once you have the basics in place, you should focus on attracting relevant followers. Target people who shop online and who’re likely to purchase from your eCommerce website.
Avoid two mistakes,

a) Don’t buy followers from any Twitter marketing company. They’re mostly inactive followers who are of no use.
b) Don’t mass follow people in the hope of getting follow-backs. This will hurt your brand image.

Instead focus on the following activities.

• Become a knowledge source: Accounts that share high quality and actionable Tweets regularly, attract followers naturally. Make sure your Tweets serve a purpose. Make them actionable. Share tips, advice and best practices. Become the go-to account for everything related to your niche.
• Target your competitors’ followers: Your competitors’ followers are the best place to start. Attract them to your profile by engaging with them. Go through your competitors’ profiles and see if there are any unanswered Tweets or questions that you can answer. Enter your competitor’s name in Twitter search and see what people are saying about them. Respond to their Tweets to let them know you are a better option.
• Cross-network promotion: Route people from your Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and other social media profiles to your Twitter account. Do this by adding your Twitter handle in all your introductions and by regularly posting about it on different platforms.
• Market with guest blogging: Guest blogging is a great way to attract followers. Target the top blogs in your niche and offer them high quality guest posts. Add your Twitter handle in the author bio and ask people to follow.
• Influence r outreach: Follow the top influence rs in your niche (people who’re regarded as experts). Respond to their Tweets and try engaging them. The more you engage with influence rs, the more exposure you’ll get.
• Acknowledge RTs: When you get Re Tweets, favorite them as an acknowledgement and send a small thank you message in reply. This will help you win more followers.
• Twitter Chats: You can host Twitter chats on different topics of your niche to boost engagement. Choose a hash tag, for example #kitchentalk, and ask all your followers to Tweet with this hash tag. Hosting Twitter chats can be fun, and can win you lots of new followers.

5. Structure Your Tweets for Maximum Engagement

Each Tweet has only 140 characters, but it still involves a lot of science in driving engagement (Re Tweets, Replies, and Favorites) on Twitter. The structure of your Tweets is crucial for your chances to attract new followers. Here are a few things you should keep in mind.

Note: The stats used below are based on a research by Dan Zarella, a social media scientist at Hub Spot.

• Tweet Length: Tweets between 110 and 115 characters attract the highest engagement and RTs.
• Link Placement: If your Tweets have links, place them near the start of the Tweet. An analysis of around 20,000 revealed that Tweets containing a link in the first 50 characters attracted more RTs and a higher click through rate (CTR)
• Hash tags: Tweets with hash tags get 55% more RTs. Use up to 3 hash tags with every Tweet.
• Quotes: Tweets with quotation marks get 30% more RTs.
• Images and Vines: Tweets with images and visual content get almost 200% more RTs.
• Tweet Timing: Tweets between 9AM – 6PM get the highest engagement on weekdays.
• Mentions: When tagging someone in a Tweet, make sure the Tweet does not start with a Twitter handle. Otherwise only the tagged person will be able to see it.

6. Track Your Performance With Twitter Analytic

Twitter analytic is a relatively new feature. But it gives you great insights on your Tweets and engagement levels. It shows you a timeline of your previous Tweets highlighting the Tweets that attracted the highest engagement and the users who showed the most interest in your content. Looking at these stats, you can make changes to your Tweet structure and content mix.

You can see your detailed account analytic s from your profile menu.

7. Encourage Sharing on Your Website

You need to make it as easy as possible for your website visitors to share your products and website pages on Twitter. You can do this by:

• Adding social media sharing buttons on your product pages. You can use services like AddThis or Digg Digg to embed sharing buttons.
• Add a statement like “Share with your friends” or “Sharing is Caring!” with your social media buttons. Simply asking your visitors can also increase your sharing numbers.
• Add a Twitter follow button on your website.

8. Use Twitter Lists to Monitor Your Target Audience

Twitter Lists is another feature that can help you target your customers much more effectively. Twitter is a noisy place and it can be very hard to focus on your target customers with so many people Tweeting at the same time.

With this feature, you can add specific people to a Twitter list and monitor them in isolation. You will only see the Tweets of the list members. This will cut the noise and help you focus on your target users.

Read More»