analytics

Readers who share your posts can bring you a whole lot of traffic to your website.

This WordPress Plugin, called “AddThis” allows your visitors to easily bookmark or share your posts with a variety of social websites, by email and even allows them to easily print your post. Perhaps more importantly, you get the ability to track the stats, or analytics, of those who not only share your posts but stats of how many clicks are made from that sharing. To do this, you’ll have to install the plugin and set up the analytics you want to track by setting up a free AddThis account.

With the AddThis plugin, you can add social bookmarking/sharing options, choosing from a variety of looks and positions on your WordPress blog. AddThis code can also be inserted to any HTML page, so is very versatile.

The image to the left gives you a peek at some custom widgets you can use on your website. There is also a library of custom icons made by 3rd party designers. You just have to check the terms of use before you use them on your site.

However even straight out of the box, you can add buttons to your site without any customization skills.

Below, are a few examples of how the widget can look straight out of the box:

AddThis also comes with in-depth stats that shows you shares over a time period you specify:

You’ll also have the ability to view your most popular posts and find out what is popular among your readers. This will help you to decide what kind of topics your readers want so you can offer more posts of a similar nature.

…and the most popular services that people share to.

Other stats available to you include your audience profile, top keywords and countries.

Like I always tell my clients, “if you can’t track it, it’s probably not worth spending time on.” This WordPress plugin will help your readers be able to share your posts with their own audience and will allow you to see what’s working best for you in your own business.

Happy Blogging,

turning visitors into buyers Many online website owners have the impression that all they have to do is attract more traffic and sales for their business will rise. As a result, website owners with this mentality will often increase marketing spending in an effort to drive more traffic to their websites. They soon find out that the effort did indeed generate more traffic, but resulted in no more sales and thus their advertising dollars were wasted.

They can’t help but ask questions like “why isn’t this working?” or “what’s missing?” Turning website visitors into buyers isn’t always about the traffic and it’s never JUST about traffic. It is a combination of the right traffic mixed with the proper onsite alterations that actually generates the sales. Here are four strategies to help you turn those visitors into buyers.

#1 Building Your Website’s Foundation

The following points will mean nothing if you don’t have a solid foundation. A solid foundation consists of an RSS enabled website, search engine optimization, and social media integration. A solid foundation is the most overlooked aspect of the websites I run across yet it involves some of the most basic and necessary elements. Once the framework of your foundation is in place, you can begin focusing on the design and your target market. Things like easy navigation, an easy to use check out process, readily available customer service links, and quality content all help build on your foundation and all these things together, enable your customer to buy your product. A weak foundation won’t make for a successful site, and before long, the business owner will begin to think that the internet just isn’t for them. Before you do anything else, step back and ensure your foundation is built to address your ideal customers needs. Doing so will ensure future efforts get rewarded.

#2 Website Analysis & Analytics

I’m a big fan of analytics. My philosophy is: if you can’t track it, don’t do it. You cannot build a lasting business without knowing exactly how it is performing. Analytics provides the data you need to make informed decisions. Just having analytics in place, is not enough. You must gather data you can act on and implement into your website to improve the performance. I see too many website owners with a desire to make changes to their website based on what they “think” is going on. They have no real reason for suggesting the changes, just a hunch that making them different in some way will hopefully alter the current course of their business, preferably for the better. This is not good business

Using a tool such as Google Analytics, will allow you to find out what keywords visitors used to arrive at your website. You can drill down even further to determine the sales generated from each keyword. In this way, you can make better decisions on using keywords within the website to attract even more visitors.

#3 Provide Optimized Landing Pages

In this instance, it’s not search engine optimization on the page but instead optimizing the page in such a way that the visitors who will arrive at the pages are better able to take the action you want them to take. The action could be adding an item to a shopping cart, starting the checkout process, reading information they need to make a buying decision or deciding to sign up for your newsletter.

Optimizing page titles for example, is a commonly neglected task in page optimization. Doing this increases relevancy in your visitor’s mind and relevancy is a key to making them take action. Landing page optimization is critical. You can read more about Landing Page Optimization here.

#4 Engage Your Visitors

Any shopping cart can deliver a product page and any store owner can provide a product description. That being said, how do you provide a product page that contains the necessary content to persuade the visitor to make a purchase? Engage them! An engaging product page offers information to the visitor that helps them make an informed decision. A product description merely listing the features and specifications of your product just won’t make the grade.

Make sure all descriptions don’t just list the features and specifications of your products, but list the benefits of the product. A benefit gives the visitor the information that they need to know to convince them that using the product will help them solve the problem that made them search for the information in the first place. For example, the feature/spec description might be ” 132 page Dog Training Guide”. The benefit description would be “Easy dog training guide that will help your dog learn all the obedience basics plus how to stop barking, digging and pulling on the leash”. It’s easy to see if this is what they are looking for from a description like the latter.

Another way to engage the visitor is to use customer reviews. Amazon is amazing at this. By letting your visitor know what others think about your product, they feel secure in their buying decision.

These four strategies are just a small sampling of the many option you have in turning visitors into buyers. Because all markets and businesses are different, ideally you should develop a strategy that fits within your overall objective.

If you are serious about turning more visitors into buyers, contact us today to schedule a free, no obligation, consultation and find out how e-Edge Marketing can help you develop an internet marketing strategy that works for your business.

To Your Success,