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Four Tips for Effective Use of Web Analytics

Due to the current economic situation effecting businesses around the world, executives are being forced to cut back even more on spending in order to help their companies survive. Unfortunately some of these cut backs tend to include critical marketing budgets. Ensuring the right cuts are being made is more crucial then ever. This week I wanted to discuss ways your web analytics data can help you make better informed decisions.  

The best approach is to find campaigns or parts of campaigns that are not efficient and to cut them while supporting the more efficient campaigns with the leftover marketing dollars. Here are a few places that I would check first to find these inefficiencies: 

Cost per Conversion Comparison
Compare the cost per conversion for each of your campaigns. In Google Analytics you will find this information under All Traffic Sources. From there click Traffic by Medium and finally select the Conversion tab. The cost per conversion for each traffic driving mechanism (I.E. medium) should be displayed if you have set up your goals properly.

Compare by Geography
Compare the cost per conversion by geography. You will find this under Map Overlay in the Visitors section of the reports. You may find that some regions have a high cost per conversion for whatever reason. Eliminate them from the geo-targeting of your paid marketing campaigns.

Time of Day
Review the cost per conversion by time of day. You can do this by going to the goals section and clicking the Graph by Hour button. You can also run a custom report to get more detailed information about the cost per conversion for each hour of the day.

Sources
We also recommend you dive more deeply into your reports to see if there are specific referring sites in paid campaigns with an abnormally high cost per conversion. Then check the cost per conversion against the creative or message used for each campaign.
If you monitor your reports closely and track the trends over time you will be able to eliminate inefficiencies and improve your ongoing campaigns. If you don't have an analytics program set up, or are interested in understanding more about the system you have in place, my team at Horizon Marketing Group is here to help.

Contact Chris Uzzo  today for a free assessment of your web analytic process.