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Do you look at your website analytics report and have no idea what it means? Don't worry. Unless you are a professional web marketer, most of the data you see on those reports won't impact your business in any significant way. But that doesn't mean you should ignore your website statistics all together.
The information provided on your analytics reports will help you tweak your web strategy to drive more traffic and ultimately generate more leads from your website.
What analytics should you track on your website? Here are five that have the biggest impact on a financial advisor's business.
Trends in site traffic
Whether your site generates a few hundred or several thousand visits per month, you should keep an eye on the trends of monthly site visits. In a perfect world, the number of visits would consistently increase from month to month. If you see consistent growth, then you are doing something right. If you see a big spike or dip in traffic from one month to the next, analyze the reason. Did you do something different to warrant an increase in traffic, such as write a popular blog post? Were you mentioned in a newspaper or magazine? Did you remove a page from your website that could have caused a drop in traffic? If you can pinpoint the reason for spikes and dips, you can replicate the campaigns that work and avoid those that don't in the future.
Popular pages
When looking at your analytics report, note which pages are most viewed over the lifetime of your site. Once you have determined which pages are the most popular, you can optimize those pages to capture leads. Include calls to action, such as to schedule a consultation, subscribe to a newsletter or download a white paper, on the most popular pages of your website.
Popular content
If you write blog posts or produce videos or podcasts, determine which content is most read, viewed or listened to over 30 days, 90 days, one year and even the lifetime of your website. Understanding which content is most popular will help you create new content that will drive people to your website.
Referring sites
Most of your website visitors will come from direct traffic, meaning a visitor typed your website URL directly into their browser to get to your site. Some visitors, however, will find your site through links from other sites.
By identifying which sites are referring traffic to your website, you will be able to determine where you should focus your efforts and which external links may need to be improved or abandoned. For example, a fee-only advisor may see significant traffic referred by www.napfa.org but see no traffic generated from other paid online directories. Knowing which sites feed traffic to your website will help you decide how to concentrate your web-based marketing efforts.
Keywords
Another way visitors will find your site is by searching for keywords. When looking at your reports, keep track of the words and phrases people are using to search for your site. You should continue to include those highly searched words in your blog posts and website copy. If words that could be used to find your website aren't used on your site, start incorporating those words in your website and blog posts.
It's easy to become obsessed with the different website metrics, such as time spent on site, bounce rate or exit rate. While those statistics are useful to marketers, they aren't going to significantly impact your advisory business. Focus on understanding these five key areas in your web analytics report and make the necessary adjustments. Soon, you'll start to see improvements in your web marketing.
Kristen Luke is the CEO and President of Wealth Management Marketing, Inc., a firm specializing in outsourced marketing department services to Registered Investment Advisors and fee-only financial planning firms. For more information, visit www.wealthmanagementmarketing.net.
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