Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Hi Igor,

I'd just go with the asking people.

It's cheap, easy and pretty accurate.

What search engines they used they should remember as most people use just one habitually, but I'll bet a lot of people won't remember the exact keyword(s), and because the difference between a great performing keyword and a lousy one can be the difference of a plural "s", you'll lose some accuracy on that one.

You're right, the other solution is way too complex, although I am very interested to see what others say on this.

Nah, use an analytics tool to discover what search engines and search terms are getting people to your site.

What pages they enter and which ones they exit on.
Build a profile of what they might be doing.

What areas of the site are they not visiting, and why not, and also why are people visiting and not calling, these are the important questions you need to ask yourself and answer.

The last part is the conversion rate, are an important metric for you to look at, if you want to improve conversion, how about a 'click to call' type solution, if a visitor likes what they see they can click a button and either be put through to a free operator or you could ring them back.

For the website analysis, if you haven't got anything in place, use either Google Analytics or Webalizer because they are both free.

Good Luck

Hello Igor,

I just joined the forum but am not new to the world of e-commerce and would like to present another alternative for your company.

What caught my attention was that only 30% of your customers are buying online, and the rest are calling in their orders. This percentage of customers buying online can be improved dramatically (thus improving your ability to track key words) by some minor site re-work.

Your site is very informative, but basically encourages your customers to call in their order as opposed to buying online.

Some suggestions for a minor site re-work follows:

1. Encourage the customer to buy online instead of calling in the order; customers do prefer to buy online.
2. When I went to purchase online, the site told me the process will take 5 minutes but also offered a phone number that is manned 24/7. It appears to be easier to call your company and ordering online will take 5 minutes.
3. Market the convenience of buying on-line (24/7) as opposes to your company taking orders 24/7.
4. Review your favorite Internet sites in which your staff buys online for some basic wording and site navigation changes on the checkout process.

Benefits
1. The operational savings your company will occur after converting more customers to buy online vs phone orders will pay for the minor site re-work over time.
2. Your key word analysis will become more accurate over time as more customers are buying online.

Best of Luck, great product and service.

Sandy