Track and Test Your Results

The final piece of your online strategy is to put systems in place to track and test everything you do online so you can improve your results.

Tracking

It’s often said that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Fortunately, it’s incredibly easy to track all your important online metrics, using any one of a number of web analytics tools.

I recommend that you use Google Analytics. It’s free, easy to install and use, popular and well supported. If you want more help than Google’s extensive tutorial library provides, it’s easy to find an independent Google Analytics consultant.

Google Analytics gives you detailed statistics about the visitors to your websites. It allows you to track visitors from all sources – search engines, PPC campaigns, email marketing and backlinks. You can track where visitors enter your site, how long they stay on your site, what pages they visit, and where they exit your site. You can set up and track conversion goals – and you can also track your conversion goals from your AdWords PPC campaigns using your Google Analytics dashboard.

Some Web 2.0 sites, such as Squidoo, won’t allow you to install your Google Analytics tracking code. In that case, use Squidoo’s analytics to track visitor behavior. The point is that you need to collect as much information as you can about how all of your Web properties perform, so you can test and improve your results.

Testing

Let’s say a visitor lands on your home page after searching for “residential painting contractor.” Which will make her stay on your site longer – a compelling headline or an attractive photo? An interior shot or an exterior shot? What copy will convert better – a message about enhancing the beauty of her home, or about your expertise and passion for painting, or about protecting her investment? How do you know?

You don’t know, at least not at first. When you first create your content and design your pages, you start out with some educated guesses about what will work – but you don’t really know. That uncertainty can cost you anxiety, time and money – worrying about making the right decision, hours of consulting with your web designer, lost opportunity until your site goes live…

There is a better approach. You can decide from the beginning that everything you do online is a test; that every result is a test result. You don’t have to create the ultimate content or the perfect page. You don’t have to choose one message over another or one headline, or one image, or one layout. You can try any or all of them, and let your visitors show you which elements work best.

This approach used to be fairly complicated and costly to implement on a large scale – but not any more. Once again, Google is the small business owner’s friend. Google Website Optimizer is a multivariate testing tool that lets you test variations in your content, images, headlines, copy, forms, and page layout. You define and track visitor conversions rates across any combination of variables – automatically. It’s an incredibly powerful tool, and it’s free. Sign up using your Google account, and start creating variations of your web pages to test. You might be on your own – there’s a good chance your web designer hasn’t heard of this tool yet.

Whether you decide to use Google Website Optimizer for wholesale testing, or you confine your testing to occasional content or image updates, the point is that you should take advantage of your ability to track and test your message. No other testing medium is as flexible, as accurate, as immediate or as cost effective. And don’t limit yourself to testing your Web content. There’s no better way to test headlines, copy and other elements of your print advertising or direct mail pieces. Test different messages to see how customers and prospects respond before spending your money on postcards, flyers or newspaper ads.

Measure the results of everything you do online, and continually test changes to your format and content. Tracking and testing is a crucial piece of your online strategy and a key to getting better business results both online and offline.