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Analyzing Campaigns in Different Media. Conversion Rate and ROI PDF Print E-mail
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Written by Seo Master   
Monday, 24 September 2007

The group of HitLens reports we're approaching now is probably the most important for the overall process of traffic analysis and for Web Analytics as a whole. The reports under the "eCommerce" and "Campaigns" categories show you how the traffic which comes from different sources converts into your loyal customers on the Web site.

The actual conversion rates depend on many factors. Thus, the keywords that your site is found by are of high importance. After that, when your site is shown in the search results, it's important that the search engine shows a comprehensive and catchy description under the link which points to your page. Many people will not buy anything on your site if it does not meet their expectations or does not justify the object of their search. Thus, an irrelevant keyword or an irrelevant description lowers your conversion rate.

When visitors come to your Web estate, other factors enter the game. These are determined by the site usability, presence of a convenient site map, well-thought structure and navigation, and even visual design. There's no need to mention that your first consideration is that your text and calls-to-action are appealing and targeted.

HitLens uses cutting-edge technology that helps you measure all of these factors and pinpoint those needing improvement.

Actually, you can analyze conversions of visits into any action. It does not have to be a sale; it can also be a download or a subscription. However, if you sell something and your business undergoes certain advertising expenses, HitLens is able to calculate the return, thus giving you the ability to control and manage your budget more effectively.

Let's start our tour through the commercial reports with the "eCommerce Summary" report available under the "eCommerce" category.

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The "eCommerce Summary" Report

This report breaks the traffic down into main source branches and shows you how many orders and revenue this or that branch generates: search engines (i.e. your organic traffic), advertising campaigns (paid traffic), referring pages (your link partners and the sites just linking to you), and bookmarks / direct typing (visitors that have come to your site just by typing your URL into the address field of their browsers or bookmarked your site during the previous session and used this bookmark).

This report can switch between the two important aspects: "conversion" and "amount". "Amount" is the absolute number of orders generated through a particular report branch. "Conversion" will show you how the traffic from a particular branch works. In the picture above, we see that the traffic from the search engines converts worst of all (only .28% of all visitors who come from the search engines make orders), while those who use bookmarks or direct typing are the most targeted customers (.62% of them make orders). This is based upon a very simple reason: we have least control of the keywords our site is ranked for in the organic search results; however, we have more control over the keywords we want to be shown for in the PPC campaigns. Finally, those who have bookmarked or remembered our site URL are most likely to remember our product and later return to pick it up.

The data for your site and the resulting graphs displaying it will, of course, vary from this example.

Let's see what conclusions we can make to improve the next cycle of our optimization campaign. First, the low conversion rate shown by the search engine traffic makes us suspect that our site does not meet our visitor's expectations and they aren't finding what they're looking for. Thus, we will undertake some visitor behavior analysis and attempt to track the keywords that convert best. Probably, they do not match our keyword optimization profile. If so, we will repeat the keyword research with these keywords in mind, then re-optimize the pages for the best converting keywords.

Next, we will try to do the same for advertising campaigns: probably the keywords we pay for are not so efficient and do not drive many targeted visitors.

The next report worth our attention is "Efficiency of referrers". It is similar to the one discussed above, however it allows you to track conversion for all referrer groups into every kind of transaction, not only into those transactions that bring you direct income. For instance, if you offer not only products, but also sign-ups for an affiliate program, you will find this report useful.

The reports that make up the core of your SEO campaign are "Activity by Search Engines", "Activity by Search Keywords" and "Activity by Referring Sites".

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The "Activity by Search Engines" report

For instance, the "Activity by Search Engines" Report shows you how the traffic coming from each engine converts into every kind of transaction, and, eventually, into revenue. If this breakdown corresponds to the priority scheme of search engines you target during your SEO campaign, it's OK. If not, it means the your control of SE visibility is unstable and you probably should study more thoroughly the search engine's requirements and add more optimized pages for a specific search engine.

The report "Activity by Search Keywords" is the one you should pay the most attention to. It allows you to determine if you have chosen the right keyword profile during your keyword research.

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The "Activity by Search Keywords" Report

Here we see that although the search term "long range weather forecast" does not occupy first place in the traffic it brings, it still converts best. It is likely that it best describes what our visitors want. So it seems to be a lucky guess and we can start off our next keyword research with it.

Optimization for the typo "weather forcast", however, is far from being successful: from the 1,705 visitors it has brought, only one has made a purchase. So if our optimization profile really contained such a term, we would want to replace it with something more productive.

You may also make any other suitable conclusions from these reports. However remember that you should always try to adhere as closely as possible to the ideal optimization scheme: the words that occupy primary places on your keyword optimization profile should be most productive (i.e. bring most traffic and convert best). As soon as this is achieved, you will have nothing to do but try to retain this situation for as long as possible.

Also, pay some attention to the "Revenue per visit" report: it tells you how valuable each of your visitors is and allows you predict sales based on your seasonal traffic fluctuations.

Campaign-related reports

The advertising campaigns are a separate kind of traffic source. HitLens pays close attention to it because as a rule, it involves certain expenditures you encounter as a business owner, and most business owners want to have a reliable tool of controlling their budget to ensure they do not waste money.

As soon as a campaign has started and the first visitor has come to your site using the campaign link, you are able to set the campaign budget, that is, to specify the amount of money you want to spend for the particular campaign. This figure will help HitLens calculate basic marketing indicators: Return On Investment, cost of visit, etc. Later in this step you will see a demo showing you how to set up a campaign budget.

When your budget is specified, HitLens knows how much you'd like to spend. By tracking the transactions by visitors who have found you due to your campaigns, HitLens also knows how much revenue you receive. Thus, it has all necessary data for calculation.

Let's take a look at how our advertising campaigns perform. The related reports are gathered under the "Campaigns" report group.

"Activity by Campaigns" lists all campaigns you're running. For each report, you will see the number of visits this campaign has generated, and the number of transactions of each kind per campaign. As with all other finance-related reports, HitLens can show you either absolute revenue earned, or conversion from visits into orders.

"Cost of Visit by Campaign" divides the amount you spent per certain period to run this campaign by the number of visits you receive through this campaign. It is useful when you have campaigns with fixed monthly budget. If you are running a PPC campaign, you establish this amount at the very beginning and after that you have no control over this metric. However if your campaign runs at a fixed budget per time period, the best known way to lower this metric is to improve your ad creatives in order to get more traffic per campaign.

"Cost of Transaction by Campaign" divides your budget by the number of transactions your campaign has generated and shows you how much you actually pay to get a transaction of each kind. The lower this metric, the more effective your campaigns are. The best means to decrease cost of transaction are to improve your landing pages, visitor navigation and traffic flow on the site, and to refine your keyword strategy so that you only target the most relevant and productive keywords.

Finally, the "ROI" report is exactly as it reads: it measures your revenue against your expenditures and shows you how effectively the first compensates the second and whether your campaigns are profitable.

What you should remember

  1. All reports related to your budget, revenue, campaign and referrer performance can be accessed under the "eCommerce" and "Campaigns" report groups (assuming that you have chosen the “eCommerce” service plan).
  2. The reports that are most important for your optimization campaign are "Activity by Search Keywords" and "Activity by Search Engines". Your goal is to achieve a situation where the optimization keyword profile for your site corresponds to the best performing keywords (those that bring the most traffic and show the highest conversion).
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