EngNet Newsletter 4 of 6 : Using Statistics to Improve Sales
Perception and reality can often be miles apart. For instance, many people
perceive a company to be successful by their fancy cars and offices, when in
reality many are up to their eyeballs in debt. Marketers will tell you that when
selling something, your company needs to improve the perception of your product
or service to sell it. People buy something on what they perceive is the best,
it may not actually be the best, but the perception created by the company sells
itself.
Before you start improving your website for online sales, you need to believe
that it is going to be worth your time, effort and money. You need to be happy
that once you start making changes that you will receive the benefits of those
changes. I believe that companies that have not yet benefited from sales through
their website need to change their perception. So how do you trade in perception
for truth? Statistics. It is not enough to wait for enquiries to come rolling in
for you to be convinced that your website works. Stats will show you if your
website is working or not, and if it is not working it will give you valuable
clues to why it is not. I'm going to use 4 actual companies that I have dealt
with as examples of how we helped them increase sales through their website.
» Company A: Spent money on a website that basically duplicated their
catalogues with the purpose of saving money by not having to send out their
catalogues.
- Perception - Believed that their business would not receive new customers
from the Internet because they service a low tech industry and the people they
dealt with didn't really use computers. Therefore, they did not perceive that
people would use search engines to find their products.
- Reality - Keyword research showed that several hundred searches were
performed each month for their specific products and if they geared their
website towards those search engines, it would generate new business.
- Solution - We provided them with an EngNet listing to prove that people are
looking for their products online, they now receive several enquiries a month
for their specific products. Through the stats they could see the exact keywords
users used to find their company. Statistics are able to prove the effectiveness
of a website as a new business generator in their industry.
» Company B: Developed a nice looking website 3 years ago and to their
knowledge it hadn't brought a return on investment. After installing stats we
were able to ascertain that the company was receiving very little benefit from
their website.
- Perception - From their experience they had formulated a perception that a
website for their company was not really worth it probably due to the type of
industry they are in.
- Reality - Search engines and directories deliver 85% of new enquiries to
websites, and their website was not effectively listed with the search engines.
We performed keyword research to find that the keywords for their products are
actually searched for several thousands of times every month.
- Solution - We optimized their website and where there were no enquiries
previously, they now receive daily referrals and we expect the referrals to
increase every month. We are now tweaking the content to improve the accuracy of
searches, as we found from the stats that quite a few keywords were not relevant
to their product range.
» Company C: Website was receiving several hundred pages viewed a month
and the website was worth the effort in order to service their existing
customers. However, no sales resulted from it.
- Perception - The website helped their overall marketing mix, but they did
not perceive it as a new sales channel for their business.
- Reality - From their stats, we could see they were getting some referrals
but very little in comparison to the popularity of their keywords. By optimising
their website for search engines we were able to substantially increase the
number of referrals to their website.
- Solution - By optimising their website for search engines, their website now
receives over 500 referrals per month from search engines for their specific
equipment. New business enquiries are now received on a monthly basis.
» Company D: Received many referrals every month but they were nuisance
enquiries and not really relevant to their products.
- Perception - They felt that mainly students who were looking for jobs and
their competitors were viewing their website.
- Reality - From their stats, we began to see what keywords where being used
to hit the website, what country they were from and generally what pages were
being viewed.
- Solution - What we began to see is that there were many irrelevant keywords
referring to their website. The ones that were relevant, were not from the same
country and seemed not to follow on to the enquiry stage. What we did was refine
the content of the website so that keywords were more accurate for the equipment
they were offering. Next we began to promote the message that this company is
active all over the world, in other words we built confidence in international
visitors so that they became aware that company D could effectively provide a
solution anywhere in the world.
Lessons Learnt:
1. Get a reality check. Trade your perceptions in for reality by
monitoring your stats.
2. Even though you don't think people will use the Internet to find
your products, do some keyword research and you may be surprised.
3. Don't underestimate the power of search engines and directories to
bring you sales.
Therefore, to improve sales from your website you need to:
a) Get them to your website- Get the people searching for your products to
your website. You need search engine optimization. (Go to www.engnetglobal.com/stats2.aspx
to see How to improve search engine positions).
b) First Impressions Count- Remember last weeks email that the first page a
user sees is not always your homepage so every page is important. Ensure
navigation links and corporate images are constant throughout the website. (Go
to www.engnetglobal.com/stats3.aspx
to see How to improve search engine positions).
c) Easy Contact- Contact details on a website is crucial as once visitors
decide they like your products/services they want to contact you quickly. We
have also found that a lot of people like to deal with local companies, so if
you have world wide distributors this will help obtain sales from international
markets. It is now easier for people to source products from overseas, but if a
company is deciding between an overseas supplier and someone local, the company
would probably go for the local company if the price is right. Remember that
referrals to your website may come from America, Africa, Europe, Asia and
Australia. Therefore you need to decide on your market, if you only want to
service the UK market it is a good idea to add your address to the bottom of
every page. For example, when someone searches for Butterfly Valves UK, if you
have a UK on that specific page you will have a very good chance of being right
on the top of the search result If you don't have international distributors but
it is a market you want to tackle, communicate your international abilities in
the text.
> Don't have a statistics system? Go to www.engnetglobal.com/tips/stats.aspx.
> Would like assistance in optimising your website to improve sales? Email
sales@engnetglobal.com
> Would like to receive the previous 3 EngNet Statistics newsletters?
email mcooney@engnetglobal.com
Kind Regards
Michael Cooney
Email - mcooney@engnetglobal.com
EngNet - www.engnetglobal.com | www.engnet.co.uk | www.engnet.co.za
