This post is a follow-up of my previous post: Why Web Statistics Are Important for Your Online Business: Part I
As promised, I’ll walk you through key statistics sellers should pay attention to by analyzing the webstats of one of My1Stop e-stores, e-Farmasi:
#1 SUMMARY
Summary shows you the number of page hits, unique visitors and/or returning visitors who came to your store for a specified duration, depending on your preferred settings. In the above example, I selected ‘Daily’, for the ‘Last 14 Days’ and eliminated the page loads/hits to only show unique visitors and returning visitors as I am not too interested in page hits. Find out more about the definition of a unique visitor by StatCounter: http://www.statcounter.com/unique_visitor.html.
The above stats snapshot shows that on 12 May 2009, e-Farmasi had 69 unique visitors, with 8 returning visitors. While web stats are never to be taken as 100% accurate, they do provide you with figures as close to actual as a system can possibly produce. So now we can pretty much say that on 12 May 2009, e-Farmasi had 69 individuals shopping about in their store, and 8 of them were returning customers. E-Farmasi has for the past 14 days, a total of 1,071 page views and 518 customers with 86 of them were returning customers. E-Farmasi has an average of 35 customers a day (for the past 14 days).
With the settings changed to ‘Weekly’, e-Farmasi (with the tracker plugged-in since 18 March 2009) has 602 total customers shopping in its store in March, 1,164 customers in April (full month) and 817 customers in May (up to 26 May 2009). Average customers weekly received for 2009 is 861 with 1,683 page views of the store.
How is this useful to a seller?
The summary shows the seller the increase/decrease of customers his website/webstore receives for the seller to later strategize his marketing efforts. For instance, it can be seen that with a few days left in May, it would take extra marketing efforts for e-Farmasi to reach, if not beat, their record in April.
If a seller has recently advertised his store or product on a popular website, he would want to see if his effort has paid off or not. The number of unique visitors before and after the advertising done can then be compared to see if the marketing was successful. The seller might later try to do some email marketing and do the same comparison. Now the seller can compare the two different marketing strategy results from the stats and have a better picture of which marketing strategy is more effective.
The unique visitor stats can also tell a seller whether there is an increase or decrease of visitors coming to his store during festive season vs normal days, and weekdays vs weekends. With this information, the seller can strategize his marketing period and duration. The virtual world/customers have their own characteristics – when they most probably will go online or offline, when they will shop virtually or physically. Find this out through your stats!
Have your stats set for a longer duration to see if your store has gained more customers than before or the opposite. This is important to see if your business has gained more attention than before or if it needs more marketing or re-strategizing. Businesses must grow, not be static, let alone wither!
#2 RECENT KEYWORD ACTIVITY
Recent Keyword Activity shows the keywords that a web user has searched for, via search engines like Google & Yahoo that brought the visitor to your store. It also shows the search engine used, the search listing page where your store is listed (clickable), and which page they were taken to from the search listing.
The above example shows that on 25 May 2009, a web visitor found (and went into) e-Farmasi when he searched for ‘nasal spray 357’ at Google Search. The visitor arrived at http://www.my1stop.com.my/v1/index.php?view=full&lot=33&itemid=1713. The stats also shows that e-Farmasi has had customers coming into their store from multiple other search keywords such as ‘steroid dalam alphalipid’, ‘hurodoid cream’, ‘perspirex’, ‘neurogain’, and more (it stretches to many more pages – why of course, My1Stop performs search engine optimization (SEO) on all its e-stores :) … and the seller has many products with detailed product information too!)
How is this useful to a seller?
When doing business online, it is important to be searchable – can be found when customers search for keywords relevant to your business/product in major search engines. Recent keyword activity does not only tell a seller what keywords brought customers into their store for a better idea of which product or section of his website/store draws people in, but more importantly how well his store is doing in search listings (how searchable a seller’s store/product is). This guides a seller on how to present his web content to gain more visitors from search engines e.g. better product description that highlights important key notes about the product/business.
#3 RECENT CAME FROM
Recent Came From tells you where your visitors came from (clicked) to arrive at your store. It could be from another website, from an email message, from a search listing, or in the case of My1Stop E-Store, from other parts of the mall e.g. other e-stores, from My1Stop search, etc.
Pay attention to the ‘came froms’ in the red boxes.
a) http://www.my1stop.com.my/v1/index.php?view=search
This URL shows that a customer searched for a product in My1Stop Virtual Shopping Mall and clicked on a product in the search results that belong to e-Farmasi.
b) http://www.myhappyclub.com/v2/ums/index.php?user=sash
This URL shows that a customer came to e-Farmasi from myhappyclub.com website (in this case would be e-Farmasi’s Advertisement banner (given free to every My1Stop featured e-store) published at myhappyclub.com.
c) http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&view=bsp&ver=1qygpcgurkovy
This URL shows that a customer arrived at e-Farmasi from a link in an email message (possibly from the seller’s email marketing)
d) http://www.wanitamelayu.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12717
This URL shows that a customer came to e-Farmasi through a link at wanitamelayu.com’s forum.
e) http://sg.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A3xsfM0x9A9KnpsA4Bkj4gt.?p=kinohimitsu D% ...
This URL shows that a customer came from a search listing at Yahoo Search.
How is this useful to a seller?
A seller could use this information to evaluate his marketing efforts – Has my email marketing been successful? Has my paid advertising on a website been worth my money? Has my marketing in a message board/forum drive in potential customers? Should I continue these efforts? Which type of marketing should I emphasize on?
If a seller has promoted in his blog, a link to his e-store as the venue for customers to purchase his products using credit card, then an arrival from that link shows that there is a demand from his customers to purchase online using credit card.
#4 COUNTRY
With Country feature, a seller gets to see from which countries his customers accessed his store from, pretty much indicating (although not necessarily) the customers’ origin. The above stats shows that e-Farmasi has had 88.0% of customers coming from Malaysia, followed by Singapore with 2.8%, Indonesia and the united States with 1.2% respectively, and multiple other countries including Korea, Brunei, Cambodia, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Nigeria, India, Germany, Canada, etc.
How is this useful to a seller?
If the list comprises various countries, a seller should consider organizing his website/store content for international customers e.g. having product descriptions in English or even other translations, or consider various delivery methods convenient for customers all over the world. It also tells a seller that he already has a global market to tackle, so the seller might want to start thinking of the demands in these countries and possibly tackle it.
So there you have it … the golden nuggets in a webstat. Sure … in business, your concern would be the actual purchase itself … but to have better potential at making sales, you’ve got to do research and not merely wait for riches to fall from the sky. You’d want to know how to draw in more customers because as has been mentioned in my previous posts, normally out of the many potential customers you get, only 10% end up as your actual customers (who make actual purchases). So the more store visitors you get, the more potential you have at making sales.
While most sellers already know that marketing is essential in any business’ success, some still fail in strategizing an effective marketing plan, simply because of their lack of research as to the whos, whats, whens and whys revolving their store visitors and visits. So be sure to view your web statistics to analyze and understand the otherwise invisible activities within your website … and then see for yourself how your business start to flourish!
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