Measure your Website's True ROI

Image via CrunchBase

by Allan Bird 10/16/2008

I attended one of the most enlightening Webinars yesterday, put on by Automotive News. It featured a presentation by Avinash Kaushik, an analytics evangelist for Google. He discussed what he described as the "Head and Long Tail Concept" which basically showed how most sites simply concentrate on the main keywords, such as the OEM Brand or Dealerships name etc as a way for customers to find them. While this is very necessary it only scratches the surface of what is available out there. The great differentiator is to invest some time in finding out who your demographic is and going after them with keywords that are of interest to that particular clientele. He also spoke of learning what is actually happening when people come to your website. Yes leads and sales are important, but what is working and not working on your site is worth it's weight in gold to a company. If people are concentrating on a particular element, why not highlight that and make it easier for them to find. An example may mean that some information on the 3rd page of your site is the trigger that gets someone to submit a lead, or make an appointment, or fill out a credit app. Get that content on the first page of your site.

Who comes back to your site again and again and what do they do when they get there?

Do you know ?

Yet there are tools available to tell you exactly that.

Dealers spend 90% of their money on the "head" and not the tail. Why not learn more about your customers and spread out the investment, in fact reduce the dollars spent and drive a higher number of customers to your site by purchasing less popular keywords that attract more people? Seems like a winner to me.

Another concept that got my attention was that most website content is decided in the end by the "Hippo" in the company or the Higest Paid Person's Opinion, who may or may not have a clue. It is hard to buck that person though as they generally sign the paychecks. Again you can quickly test out an idea by posting differnet types of content and then measuring the results to prove or disprove an opinion quickly and scientifically rather than emotionally.

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