Putting up an online store can be one of the best business decisions made in this digital age, considering the ever-increasing number of people willing to buy products and services over the Internet. However, having an e-commerce website isn’t enough, as it doesn’t guarantee an increase in sales without the proper marketing strategy in place to drive more people to the site.
To build a winning strategy, a business needs to have a good foundation based on hard numbers about their target audience’s engagement with them. This is why tracking online traffic is necessary. Thankfully, there are a couple of great tools that can be utilized to do just that and more.
Google Analytics
Just about every serious online business uses this incredibly handy free tool by Google. It features some of the most comprehensive metrics for websites, whether they’re an e-commerce site or not. It gives users a full rundown of site traffic including number of views on every page and the unique visitors each one gets, which part of the world they come from, and how long they stay on certain pages. Their progression can then be seen as a graph which can also be viewed by the hour, by day, by week, and by month.
What’s more important for e-commerce websites though is its Conversion Suite, which allows users to get an in-depth look at how customers engage with their sites. It lets users track everything from the number of sales to the number of downloads of videos/podcasts/manuals, etc.; it provides data on how long customers take before making a purchase through days and site visits; and it shows the process customers take that lead them to buy among other things.
Users can also setup these metrics for different campaigns through the Advanced Segments feature, letting them compare the effectiveness of each one so they know where they can focus their marketing efforts.
dashboardMD
For a more specific type of online tracking tool, dashboardMD is a prime example of catering to a niche with features designed with the particular industry in mind. It focuses on healthcare businesses, delivering a daily dose of data such as employee performance, compensation reports, and billings reports for customers.
All this is done through the cloud, allowing users to instantly access the data without having to go through too much hassle implementing the system into their own businesses information architecture.
Everything is compiled by the system, and the information can then be viewed on easy-to-read interactive dashboards with the option of seeing the numbers laid out daily, weekly, or monthly. They can also be viewed as tabular reports that contain every single necessary detail. These reports can then be exported into PDF and Excel formats, and then shared through email.
The automation and flexibility makes for a much more convenient process of understanding the financial direction of healthcare businesses, giving them both insight about what needs improving and more time to spend on improving instead of manually drawing up charts, graphs, and tables every day/week/month.
Its quality and efficiency has led to a partnership with e-MDs, a company focused on providing management solutions for practicing physicians, giving its users an even more wide-reaching yet streamlined look at how their businesses are performing.
Sage ACT!
Another tracking tool worth mentioning is Sage ACT! which is for the customer relationship arm of businesses. It helps users manage their contacts with pertinent details such as their contact information and their positions in the companies they work for, set up schedules and required tasks, and integrate with other tools and social media platforms like Gmail and LinkedIn.
Sage is currently offering two versions of the program, Sage ACT! Pro and Premium, with the latter simply having more options such as instant shared access to a central database using desktop and mobile platforms and more security features among others. The Premium version is suited more for teams dedicated to contact management, while the Pro version is more than enough for individuals.
Whatever the version used, the tool sets out do exactly what it does through a simple interface covering a broad range of information. Again, having all this data at hand incorporated with their other systems and social media gives its users a much clearer picture of their target audience including which demographics they fall into and what professional activities they participate in.
Whether it’s in the general e-commerce market or a niche industry, it always pays to know just how well the business is doing with the help of tracking tools. They offer a deeper level of market analysis with factual basis, letting online businesses make more informed decisions about their overall strategy to ultimately increase conversions.
About The Guest Author: Teoddy Baldomaro is a business writer for Salehoo, a wholesale directory of online suppliers and retailers. He also writes about drop-shipping, marketing and the likes. You may follow him via Twitter @teoddybaldomaro.
Marketing Results Chart Photo via Shutterstock
Of those 3 mentioned above, Google Analytics is my personal favorite not only because it’s free but it offers extensive features that any other Analytics software offer for a fee. All it has nice API for a much more customised solution.