Track or Perish

Who me? Track?

Now I realize some turn a blind eye towards tracking results on their site. Either preferring to look the other way or perhaps asking Stevie Wonder to watch over it for them. Because apparently their attitude is if they've got money coming in, well, how bad can it be?

Dunno. And if you don't want to maximize the cash flow from your site I suppose that's between you and Stevie.

But if you're not tracking what's working on your site, you're flying blind. Maybe even leaving serious money on the table. Because how can you improve if you have nothing to compare to?

Sorry for the heavy dose of reality. But remember this. You can have more traffic than Google but if it doesn't convert what good is it?

Take for example that hot site that streams a hilarious cartoon poking fun at John Kerry and George W Bush. It was created by two brothers who happened to be on Jay Leno the other night.

They revealed to Jay they had had 20 million hits to their site.

The brothers also confessed their plan to accept donations to support their work generated all of, you ready for this, $1000!

You read that right. 20 million hits converted into all of $1000 in cold?hard?cash.

How much traffic did they waste? My guess? Tons. So as you can see traffic isn't always the answer.

Now before I trip the Digression Alarm Buzzer, by tracking I mean monitoring various conversion rates for key pages on your site. In order of importance here's what you want to track.

=====> Sales Pages

Since sales letters are where the rubber meets the road for sure you want stats for them. How many unique visitors hit such pages every day? Of those how many convert? Divide the second number by the first and you've got your conversion rate. Pretty simple right? Depending on your price point, anything less than 1% is probably unsatisfactory.

Watching the day to day conversion fluctuation isn't necessarily the best use of your time. But monitoring that on a week to week basis might be. As any downward trend might indicate problems ahead.

=====> Affiliate Product Review Pages

Assuming you sell affiliate products, either as an add on or your primary profit producer, again you want to see which ones best convert to sales.

Those that are your best sellers, like your top 10 to be completely uncreative, you might feature prominently on your home page. Spend time optimizing their pages. Link t o them from other internal pages of your site to get each some PR and link rep to help it rank higher.

Products that don't convert as well you can let ride, demote in terms of emphasis on your site or eliminate altogether.

=====> Special Pages

That might be your ezine sign up page. Maybe the auto responder course you offer in exchange for an email address page. Or any sort of activity that can lead to sale - THAT you want to track. For instance the page on my site that falls into this category is the quiz page that shows in the sig file below.

I like to see how many unique visitors stop by. I know how many took it. Again I calculate the percent of conversion. I continually try to make it as inviting as possible so as many as possible take it.

=====> Content Pages

No need for anything fancy here. You may just want to see which are the most popular pages on your site.

Why? Perhaps you can get clues for future products. Or two, you could always slip in a mention plus a link to your sales letter from the popularity contest winners. Might as well bring it up and suggest visitors stop by, no?

Now you can track a number of ways. There are some commercial programs that are quite robust.

But I use a $45 cgi script - Prolinkz. [http://prolinkz.com] And don't worry it's super simple to install.

So as not to be accused of flogging a product let me simply say all you do is stick a 1 by 1 pixel on the page you want track, set up a unique tracking code for that page and Prolinkz does the rest. No muss. No fuss.

Anyway, continuous improvement is the way to better than average success. Online or off. Tracking is how you get there. And if you don't track? you risk perishing. Because how can you improve what you don't measure?

John Gergye shares more ideas like this in his just updated eBook "Traffic From Google in 35 Days". Find out more here: http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/j/tfg35cl. shtml/ Or test your search engine IQ by taking his seo quiz http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/s earch-engine-quiz.shtml/ and get the free special report "Coming Out On Top".

---

Promote Your Website Using Newsgroups

At present there are over 3.3 billion pages indexed by... Read More

Why You Should Learn HTML

Do you have a website or are you planning on... Read More

How to Advertise on the Internet

Do you want to reach millions of potential customers for... Read More

Web Site Advertising: 10 Blockbuster Secrets To Make Your Web Site More Profitable

Do you want to make your website more profitable?If you... Read More

Ten Unobvious Ideas To Pull Visitors to Your Real Estate Agent Web Site

The number one key to getting business in the real... Read More

How to Keep Your Visitors on Your Site

Does your web site's visitors keep on hitting the back... Read More

Link Building Secrets - Promote Your Website with a Proven Tactic

Building links to your website is of huge importance and... Read More

The 5 Key Steps To Promoting Your Website

Promoting your website can seem like a daunting, complicated task.... Read More

Types of Keywords

Keyword can be classified into three categories :-Single word Keyword-Multiple... Read More

DMOZ - Is it Still Worth the Submission Time?

DMOZ is known all over the internet as being the... Read More

10 Highly Effective Ways to Increase Website Traffic and Promote Your Website for Free

There are many ways to promote your website for free... Read More

One In A Million - Make Your Site Stand Out

"One in a million". What do I mean by that?... Read More

Five Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion Rate

Though it's wonderful to get all those hits to your... Read More

Ineffective and Unethical Web Site Promotion Methods

In this article I discuss some ineffective and/or unethical website... Read More

I Need Real Visitors, NOT Search Spiders!

The answer to the first question is simple, the difference... Read More

3 Steps To Increasing Your Web Traffic For Free

You own a website and you want more traffic. More... Read More

Can What You Dont Know About Web Analytics Hurt Your Site? Yes is an Understatement!

Web analytics. Don't worry, it's not as boring as it... Read More

Novel Free-For-All Idea

Almost anyone who has tried submitting to free-for-all sites will... Read More

Website Promotion: 10 Power Secrets To Keep Your Profits Rolling

Here are 10 power secrets to help your website promotion... Read More

How to Get More Links to Your Websites and Improve Traffic

I feel the most effective way to get people to... Read More

Free Advertising the Smart Way

Your biggest asset when becoming an internet marketer is to... Read More

Culture and Website Localization

Culture and Website Localization With the rise... Read More

SEO - How Fast Do You Want To Get To The Top?

Search engine optimization by some is considered a science and... Read More

Website Promotion ? Writing Articles Generates Traffic Four Different Ways

Writing articles and submitting them to free content sites is... Read More

How Popular Are You,... Online That Is?

With the web today you "sorta haveta" have a rank... Read More

Submitting Your Website With Web Promotion Services

Once you have built and uploaded your home business website... Read More

Your Website on My Forehead

People are so focused on promoting their websites on the... Read More

The Basics Of Free Web Site Promotion

It's easy to forget the fundamental components of Web site... Read More

DMOZ Editors - Does Absolute Power Corrupt Absolutely?

DMOZ editors are supposed to be professionals in the category... Read More

Web Site Promotion-Advertising Your Website For Profits

Making money with your web site is the dream and... Read More

Writing Quality Articles to Promote Your Business

Writing and distributing articles is fast becoming a popular method... Read More

Why The One-Pronged Website Promotion Method Doesnt Really Work

Would you attempt to use a cell phone with a... Read More

The Top Ten Ways To Promote Your Site And Increase Traffic

Website promotion is a vital area in internet marketing that... Read More