THE INTELLIBLOGSOnline Marketing Under the Hood – Part I
Wednesday, October 8, 2008 at 11:27AM Have you ever wondered what’s going on underneath the hood of your website? What are your visitors looking for? Which sites are referring visitors to you? Are they doing what you want them to do?
Each user is unique and will navigate your site in a different way. Need proof? There’s a small test you can do to find out. Stand behind a friend or colleague (WARNING: don’t do this to a stranger) and ask him/her to go to a website you both visit frequently. You will see how they click on things you never even noticed before. That’s why you probably have fingerprints on your screen… Whenever you’re surfing the web with someone else by your side they need to point at your screen to tell you where to go because you’re not clicking on the same links they would click on!!!
Every detail counts when it comes to analyzing user behavior. You may use the tab key to switch between form fields or you might use the mouse to click on every box. Some people use ctrl+c to copy text, and others right click on a mouse button and then select “copy.” Your website visitors are the same. They may have similar goals, but each one will take a different approach to accomplish them.
This difference in user behavior is a critical component to measuring the performance of your online marketing initiatives. Now that you recognize this, how can you figure out how visitors are interacting with your site to make informed decisions on how to improve the visitor experience?
Fortunately, web analytics tools (like Google Analytics) can give you the insight you need to really understand user behavior.
In my next couple of posts, I will demonstrate how FIU Business has been able to leverage Google Analytics to track and measure the effectiveness of our marketing efforts across multiple channels, including Facebook advertising and Intelliworks email campaigns.
Yes, you’re able to measure each of these individually of course, but integrating these channels with Google Analytics can help you see where people are going on your site after clicking on your ads or email links.
Check back tomorrow for Part II :)
Joel Cloralt is E-Marketing Coordinator at Florida International University.
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