To install Google Analytics you need to set up an account at http://www.google.com/analytics/. During the setup you will be given a simple piece of JavaScript code that needs to be added to the end of each page that you want to track on your Website. You can do this yourself or get your Web Developer to do it for you.

Within a few days you’ll be able to see how many people visit your site. Where in the world they live, how they got to your Website along with many other things.

Google Analytics can help you keep track of Conversion using a feature called Goals. You need to decide what kind of goals you want to track. If you sell products then the sale of the product is a goal. If you sell services then someone contacting you using an email form is a goal.

When you have the goal set up, you can begin to tell a number of things, such as where people live that buy your products. Which keywords they used to get to your Website. You might find that people who buy your product are clustered in a particular area, or that some keywords are better at selling your products than others. i.e. they are better at conversion.

How you use the metrics in Google Analytics to improve conversion is something quite apart from looking at the fancy graphs and numbers. What I mean is, when you find a keyword that is a good convertor, that’s interesting information. But how can you make it useful. What actions can you take to improve your conversion from that. That’s information that isn’t particularly easy to find online.

What we need to know is

Google Analtyics Metric +

Take Specific Action

= Improved Conversion

So in future posts I’ll be going into that in more depth.

So if we want to look at how to improve our conversion, and first we’ll think about our Website we have 2 things to look at. If we use the example of a 3% conversion rate, that means for every 100 people 3 of them have taken the action we desired. So there are only 2 things we can look at

1. 3 people took action – let’s find out what they liked and how we can improve it
2. 97 people didn’t take action – let’s try and find out why they didn’t take action

This doesn’t have to be difficult. There is quite a bit of information you can gather for free and its all going to come from your customers. One of the biggest problems I come across is that people don’t talk to their existing and previous customers. It’s much cheaper to find out what they like and don’t like and cater to their needs than to try and get new customers.

So how about this. Look up your last 10 customers right now. Pick up the phone and give them a call. Believe it or not they’ll be surprised and probably happy to hear from you. Find out what motivated them to buy what they liked about the process, what they didn’t like. Are they likely to buy again. Would they recommend their friends?

When a person arrives at your Website we can think of them as a browser. They might leave right away, so you haven’t converted them to anything. Just as easily they might start browsing your Website. Right there you have made your first conversion. You’ve turned a browser into a more in depth browser, they’re interested in what you have to offer and are going to stick around and investigate a little further.

If you’re like most people with a Website, your ultimate aim is to make some money so the ultimate conversion then is converting a browser into a buyer. But it doesn’t stop there, you want to convert your buyer into a repeat buyer.

Measuring Conversion

So how to we go about measuring conversion. Well quite often it’s measured as a percentage. The percentage of people you convert from one state to another.

So say if 100 people visit (visitors) you’re Website and 3 of them buy something (buyers) your conversion is

(3 buyers/100 visitors) * 100% = 3%

So the calculation that can be used for any conversion is as follows:

(number of people at new state

/number of people at original state) * 100%

= conversion rate

What of it?

OK so here’s what this should mean to you:

If as in our example 3 people out of 100 buy something from you. That means 97 people did not buy what they were looking for from you. Maybe they didn’t buy it at all, or maybe they bought it from someone else. It’s not too big of a stretch of the imagination to consider that 1, 2 or maybe 3 of those people could have bought something from you.

So if 1 more person bought something from you out of those 100 people you would have a 4% conversion rate.

You might think, so what, a 1% increase isn’t much. But hang on a minute, it’s not a 3% conversion rate, its actually a 33% increase. Here’s how we work that out.

Increase = 1%

Old Conversion rate = 3%

(1/3)*100% = 33%

OK, so we’re still talking percentages, and percentages don’t put food on the table, so what’s that in pounds, dollars and pence?

Let’s say you sell £6,000 worth of goods with a conversion rate of 3%. Well if you increased that to 4% you would make £8,000! That’s an increase of £2,000.

The bottom line: optimise your conversion and put more money in your pocket.

I’ve studied Internet Marketing for over 5 years, have tried many things, failed at many things and succeeded at a few. I think I’ve learned more from the failures than the successes though.

I’ve seen many “make money on the internet”  type schemes along the way. People tell you how easy it is, but leave out many of the details on how to actually do it, just providing vague instructions that beginners can get lost in. I’m going to try and debunk some of those myths here and try and explain things more clearly.

If I don’t explain it well enough, please tell me and I’ll improve it.

And right there is the first lesson in marketing:

Ask people what they want… and give it to them.