E-business (or also known as electronic business) has become a sales outlet for many businesses over the Internet. The phenomenal growth of E-business since the late nineties is an indication of how easy and convenient Internet shopping has become. Manufacturing, retail as well as service providing businesses are making increasing use of the Internet to not only advertise and market their business but provide sales services as well.

The enormous increase in E-business does not always spell success for the business. Knowledge of Internet marketing and advertising, SEO’s as well as a host of software material that is designed to improve the ROI is of vital importance if you want to stay ahead of the pack and secure a successful business.

Once a company embarks on an advertising campaign, it is imperative that the marketer keeps an eye on the sales performance that will be generated by the advertisement. Because of the huge amount of e-business competitiveness on the internet today, keeping a track record of visitors or customers to the website can lead to the marketer making well informed decisions that will hopefully increase the business sales and an increase in profits.

How Effective Is It to Pay per Click?

PPC (or Pay per Click) conversion tracking is a software tool that has been designed to keep track of every potential customer that enters the website. The marketer is faced with the challenge of creating an ad with maximum use of appropriate keywords and terms that will generate the highest traffic.

The tracking system aids the marketer by providing the necessary statistics of the series of events of each click made by a visitor or potential customer to the website. One of the main objectives of the ppc conversion tracking system is to get the relevant information on where the clicks have originated.

That will enable marketers to target the ideal market for their advertising campaign. If the advertising is aimed at the global market, then this data becomes very valuable indeed. Ppc conversion tracking will also highlight the traffic source that generates the most conversions.

A conversion that is executed on affiliate sites is tracked and the data recorded is another benefit of the ppc conversion tracking system. The tracking system records every conversion by date and time and the marketer can readily use this information.

The Salesman’s Right Hand

Sales tracking software has become a very handy and necessary tool in today’s business world. Professional salesmen use this software to replace all the paper spreadsheets that was used to contain relevant data. Sales tracking software enables the salesperson to keep track of sales as well as new leads that may also lead to sales opportunities. Customer accounts and management can usually take up a lot of time. Sales tracking software makes this a lot easier for the salesperson as it will give him direct access to the customer’s details. This will eliminate unnecessary waste of time and faster sales execution. When purchasing sales tracking software, care should be taken that it is ideally suited for your business operations.

In terms of search engines, the advertiser bids appropriate keywords and when a user then types in that keyword or views a webpage containing that keyword, the advertisement will then be displayed. Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing as well as MSN Ad centre are amongst the largest pay per click optimization providers out there and serve most clients across the globe.

However, companies such as Ask Jeeves, Kanoodle and MIVA are also proven to be market leaders in the world of pay per click optimization.

How To Run Pay Per Click Successfully

Having pay per click optimization does not in itself prove success; it needs to be run properly in order to generate returns. Running a successful pay per click campaign involves writing good ad copy and bidding strategically on your keywords.

Together with a website that converts visitors into paying clients will soon result in triumph. Remembering that if such campaign is not run successfully and efficiently however, the expense could be quite heavy and result in it being more disadvantageous than beneficial. 

Hitslink Good For Pay Per Click

Hits link is a web analytics aid that provides a report on the amount of visits a particular website receives. How visitors found the site, how effective a site is and whether or not visitors transacted on the site is included in this report.

Hitslink can be useful in terms of a pay per click application in the sense that the report allows the user to get information regarding the clicks and transactions. This detailed report will list all transactions and activities that have occurred on the website as well as the click history of all visitors including which search engines, keywords and referrers have generated clicks.

In turn, this report will then be useful when it comes to decision-making and determining if advertising is feasible or if the costs are higher than the returns received.

Hitslink Useful For Pay Per Click Fraud

Users are generally concerned with pay per click fraud and it has been proven that by incorporating hits link. Click Fraud is a type of Internet crime that occurs when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad with no interest in the link but rather to generate a charge per click.

Because of a hitslinks tracking ability, users are able to track repeat visitors of pay per click campaigns and even set up email alerts for traffic spikes and click fraud detection. Once the tracker is installed, a report is produced within seconds.

Due to its (computers) accurate and efficient response, as well as its vast storage capabilities, it has enabled businesses to run more efficient, be more accurate, and ultimately more profitable. Since the introduction of the internet and web surfing it has given birth to e-businesses.

 Web Analytics

Web analytics provides companies with useful information that can assist companies in many critical areas of business. Namely marketing strategy, new product design, applying and creating new business processors, as well as strategic business planning .Web analytical research has become the core centre of business strategy.

 Web analytics positions companies close to the market, and using analytical forecasts allows companies to make necessary amendments to accommodate the shifts in the marketing trend. Having the competitor’s edge and being at the forefront of new business initiatives is achievable using web analytics in e-business.

 Web Analytics Positions companies to…

Be able to identify their target market. Be able to identify the need in the market, and to create products and services to meet that need. Have access to vast research material and data which varies into different categories. It is therefore a vital and useful marketing and research tool that empowers companies to be driven by the needs of the customer base, always delivering the right product at the right time, in the right place. 

Understanding E-Business

The Internet has now become a tool for businesses to provide services to customers. The buying and selling of products and services electronically, and communicating with business partners. E-Business initiatives require the same principles for management as in the offline world in order to succeed.

With strategic planning, execution and analysis, businesses will be able to achieve their online business goals. It has been predicted that 50 percent of all e-business initiatives will fail. That is why using web analytics in e-business is crucial. Companies must therefore measure ROI ( Return On Investment ) based on results driven by KPI’s ( Key Performance Indicators ) which can help improve the e-commerce objectives, by serving as warning signs to inform when things are going wrong.  

Companies have realised the importance of doing a closed loop analysis of their programs by using web analytics in e-business, to know exactly how their programs are performing.

Web analytics positions companies to run more profitably by enabling better strategic operations which will reduce cost of sales, increase brand awareness, and assist in improving customer satisfaction ratings. Through doing research into how best to maximise the use of web initiatives, you will be able to identify the target market, measure results, and have regular access to this information, so as to allow execution to be tuned. Alterations can be made as to how data will be stored and how the company’s decision makers can use it strategically to gain advantage. This will allow executives to maximize benefits and minimize losses.

We all are not IT geeks or webmasters and even businesses sometimes struggle to find suitable web analytics aid especially small businesses and those on a shoestring budget who might not have a lot of money for complicated and advanced analytics tools. Choosing a web analytics product wisely becomes vital but being informed is the starting point.

 Starting With The Facts

HitsLink is proven to be the most reliable and cheapest web analytics provider although its opposition, Webtrends and Goolge are just as efficient. But what are web analytics? Web Analytics can be seen as a study of online behavior necessary to improve it.

There are two types, on-site and off-site. Off-site web analytics are measurements of a websites potential audience on the internet as a whole whilst On-site web analytics measure the performance of ones own website.

Advantages of Incorporating Web Analytics

Web analytics products are mainly used to improve and manage a website. When applied to a website it generates a report on all activity and transactions of visitors that occur within the particular website.

Its visitor tracker function serves to be the greatest advantage of this tool in the sense that it helps in the decision making process and eventually to make the website more user-friendly. The information received by the tracker can be used to identify whether visitors are entering the site at all and at which point they drop off.

The purpose of determining the visitors’ behavior is important to observe whether marketing is effective or not. The visitor tracker therefore is not only used to determine the amount of visitors a site has but also understanding why visitors are attracted to the site and also how.

More specifically, this study of behavior done by  the visitor tracker can help a company to improve marketing in various ways. They are able to tell what keywords brought the visitor to their site, the navigation paths the visitor followed, what webpage’s are interesting and those that are not and finally how marketers can now improve and adapt their marketing strategy.

The focus is put on considering the visitor and not merely receiving statistics but using it not only to benefit the company but also the client.

Why Choose HitslinkWeb Analytics

Hitslink is an easy to use free service with great features and for companies testing the analytics waters could be the safest option considering it is absolutely free. Meaning that one is able to play around with the product and understanding the way it works before committing to an expensive maybe more advanced aid.

Not to say that Hitslink is not top of the range, with Hitslink analytics you will be able to compare the behavior and profitability of visitors referred from ads, keywords, search engines, and emails, and gain insight into how to improve your site overall.

Google is still selling the software ‘Urchin on demand’ and released the sixth edition in April 2008, sales are conducted through agents that offer a value added service. Google Analytics is available free to all users, even if they do not advertise through Google however some generous limitations apply to users that do not advertise through Google.
Once these limits have been reached there are nominal service fees charged for the use of this software.

How it works for online benefit

Users are required to add a Google Analytics Tracking Code, also referred to as a ‘page tag’ to every page on their website. This tracking code loads a file from the Google server and links between the website and the users account number.
This tracking code also installs cookies used to store anonymous information regarding visitor recurrence, time straps and referrers on visitor’s computers. Data is processed hourly and data processing is only a few hours behind real time.
There has been many concerns raised about making confidential information available to Google, giving them access to sales figures, rates and advertisement costs but inevitably you will need to feed some company with this information in order to have detailed reporting available when needed.

What google analytics can do?

Visitors can arrive at a website via a link on e-mail, search engines, pay per click advertising or digital documents; Google analytics keeps track of this and delivers detailed reports on this information to the client.
Pay per click campaigns on Google can be intensively monitored and conversions to sales easily determined. Sales conversions are monitored by gathering information from the funnel pages on a website, these are the pages leading directly to a sale.
This can give you vital information about abandoned sales, indicating possible problems in the purchasing process. This program is very flexible and can run reports weekly, monthly or any other periods that you may select.

How you can benefit

Most companies would not have the professional resources to do website analysis in-house, this would however be extremely time consuming and would require a large amount of disk space. By using Google Analytics you can save time and money. Google analytics can help you determine which ads are not generating many sales and which ads are performing very well. By canceling the ads not delivering the desired return on investment your company will save considerably.
Ads that are leading traffic to your website with a high conversion rate might then be further optimized to capitalize on a high ranking ad. The Google Analytics reports can easily be used in return of investment calculations and used in budgeting or other marketing decisions.

However, so little people actually understand what the point is of using a web analytics service. Web analytics feedback allows the user to quickly become aware of any activity on their websites.

Very user friendly, these reports carry only necessary information on what your website is or is not doing and one will be able to pick up on whether your companies website is useful or not. By determining this, one can then increase profits by simply using the information from the web analytics feedback and applying it to make educated decisions based on the report.

Useful Decision Making Tool

As mentioned above web analytics are handy in decision-making. How they do this is by tracking visitors on your websites and recording all their actions. What you will be able to see is which links they use and how long they stay on your website and where they drop off.
A hit link is a type of web analytics aid used in a similar way to detect who visits your site and how they found you. It will show if they buy or transact on your site and also how effective your advertising is. The information received can now be used to decide what ads to keep, what links to improve on or whether people are interested in the site at all.
Performance To Increase Profits

How exactly will knowing the performance of a website increase profits? Is the website not only but an additional source of advertising? True, a companies website could be seen as another way of promoting a business but what needs to be remembered is that some companies solely rely on the internet to not only market their business but sometimes it is their business.

All correspondence is done via the Internet as well as sales. Making use of web analytics feedback in these circumstances is vitally important. To be able to work out the trend on the site and know the activity thereon ultimately helps in decision making but also increase profits.

By incorporating a hits link, one is able to monitor the amount of people entering their site daily. With this, they will be able to see where they can improve their products more and also try to figure out why there is low activity. They will be able to tell at which point a potential customer drops off and then make the website more captivating.

Statistic Geek Not Necessary

With various hit link services readily available on the internet web analytic aids are advantages in the sense that instead of hiring a stats professional or your IT guy to monitor web activity, business are empowered to measure how engaged users are themselves which is another way of saving money and indirectly increasing profits.

Google Analytics is a tool which can monitor your website, or rather, a tool which is used to monitor important details about how traffic enters and exits your web pages, and by inserting some Analytics Tools onto the page you want to monitor, you can enhance and Optimise Google Analytics.

What are they and what do they do?

Firstly, they are all found on the Contents Tab.  The first is called ‘entrance sources’, but before you install, or use, this tool check where your traffic is coming from. You need to ascertain if most of your traffic is coming from either other websites, or from social networks, rather than from search engines.  If this is the case, it might mean that your pages are not optimised enough for you to receive, or attract the traffic you want, and you will need to Optimize Google Analytics by activating this tool.

Another tool you can use to Optimise Google Analytics is called ‘Entrance Keywords’.  You need to investigate which keywords people use to find your site on search engines and decide if these are the words you are targeting.  If they aren’t, then chances are that your site may not be optimized enough on these search engines in order for your keywords to be found.

Lastly, another tool you can use to Optimise Google Analytics is called “Site Overlay” which is a very useful tool and will definitely aid you in Optimising Google Analytics.  With this tool you can actually overlay your statistics on your site so that you can see which links on your site are clicked the most, and not only that you can use this tool to evaluate clicks, transactions, revenue and goals.
What are the Benefits of Web Analytics?

One thing that could be considered a Web Analytics Benefit is that it enables you to measure and maximise ROI.  Another Web Analytics Benefit could be that it will help you to better target your marketing efforts by determining which group your visitor belongs in and whether or not they are amongst the group that is most likely buy, become a member or a subscriber.
The way a web analytics tool defines this is by grouping visitors based on the content they read, the actions they take or even from which URL they come from.
There are many more Web Analytics Benefits, but one that stands our and deserves mentioning, and that is that by their use, they can help customers help themselves.  How they do this is by indicating whether or not visitors are finding the information they need on your website.
Another Web Analytics Benefit would be that they include early detection systems, highlighting any possible problems on our site. If it incorporates a Real-time analysis of visitor interaction, or communication with your website, this can prompt you to make changes that will ensure your products meet the needs of your customers and which will uncover potentially larger support issues before they become liabilities.

For an example, the word ‘Nike’ is a far more competitive word than the word ‘shoes’.  The person who bids for the word ‘Nike’ will pay a higher price to have it listed on, lets say, Google AdWords, than the person who is trying to get a place for their keyword ‘shoes’.

And as with any bidding those who pay the most get the prize, which in this case is top position for your website.

How to Get Started

Each time a visitor clicks on your website you pay the same amount that you bid for your keyword, this called ‘pay per click’ or PPC.  To get your PPC Bid Management started you need to identify the maximum cost per click, or CPC, you are willing to spend for a keyword phrase.

CPC’s change over time and from search engine to search engine and are dependent on a rule of thumb within the industry or on factors like profit margins.  If you are not comfortable with the ‘rule of thumb’ you can hire a PPC manager before engaging PPC Bid Campaigns. I you want to try it yourelf you could try using simple calculation where you average out the top five current bids, or you could base your CPC on your profit margin.

If your product sells for $100 each and your profit margin is 20%, then you are left with $20 profit.  If you expect 1 sale from 100 PPC ads, you will have $20 to spread over 100 visitors which equates to 20 cents per click.

Then What?

Now you can start bidding and it is here where it would be important for you to develop a strategy for managing your bidding process. What is important is that you are successful in promoting your website, and you will be if you have the time to build many lists across many engines, lists that will need to be monitored and studied in order to assess their performance and ultimately show what value you are receiving in relation to what you are spending.

But this is all very time consuming, and can get quite complex, so you may want to investigate hiring a  good PPC Bid Manager that will help you get the best results you possibly can, the most profit you can make and keep you ahead of  the competition.

One avenue to explore in this direction is using a web based subscription or you can purchase software which is developed for this use and which contains more functions that a normal online marketing tool

Secrets

Most often pay per click secrets are based on experiences of people who can offer better ways to do things, but usually pay per click secrets offer the reader a way to get advertising at a lower cost.

Why does Google Analytics Options offer?

If all you are looking for is monitoring tool which will tell you how many people are using or visiting your website, and how they got there, then Google Analytics Options is ideal.  Used by anyone with a website, bloggers and/or webmasters find it invaluable in monitoring traffic and gaining information like the loyalty of the visitor, in other words, how long they stay on your site, and how many times they return.

It can show what they are actually searching for, or what they are reading on your site and can show what parts or pages of your site they visited, how long they stayed there and from which traffic source they came.

A traffic source may be ‘direct’, that is your visitor came straight to your URL and not through any kind of search, or link.  Another traffic source is called ‘referring’ which shows which visitors were sent to you from other sites via links.  Search Engines qualify as a traffic source and Google Analytics Options will show how many people find your site via a Search Engine, and which one.

How does Google Analytics Options Work?

After installing the application, each time you open Google Analytics Options you will be presented with what is called a “Dashboard”.  It is very simply a graph which shows the evolution of traffic on your site over a certain period of time which can be set for long periods, or a specific day.

There is also an option that shows page views, unique views and bounce rate.  A bounce rate shows when a visitor leaves a page or site without visiting any other site within a specified time span, so this will able to tell if the visitor found what they are looking for on your site, or whether they are still searching.

With this type of valuable information, you can optimise your site, or blog to attract more visitors.

Does Google Share your Data?

Google holds itself in very high regard with regard to user trust and user experience and as such offers customers the option to either ‘opt in’ and share their data with Google, or choose the anonymous data sharing option.  The reason for sharing data is that it helps Google improve their services by creating more powerful services for the end user.  However, these features, as they become available, are only available to those who ‘opt in’ to share their data.

If the anonymous option is chosen, Google will remove all identifiable information about your website, and then combine that data with hundreds of other anonymous sites who are in similar industries and report them back as an aggregate
Google Analytics Options offers the user a choice of whether to share data publicly or and a such uses

This data sharing policy enables us to improve two things Our goal is to provide customers with transparency, choice, and an improved product experience., it will be used to generally improve the products we provide you. However, it will not affect a customer’s own account without an additional step of explicit approval for each affected product or service

A ROI Tool is typically used by companies who provide high-cost products.  It is a sales tool used to provide prospective clients with enough factual, mathematical and financial information in order for them to make an informed decision on whether to invest, or not.

Achieving Success

The success of a ROI Tool starts with the sales and marketing teams.  It is vital that they commit right from the beginning to building, promoting and developing a ROI System.  Another element to success is that once the ROI System has been implemented, it needs to be trained to others throughout the organization.  So, right away, this shows that without the sales force as well as management ‘buy in’, or training, the ROI Tool will not be used to its optimum and may not benefit a company.

Possible Difficulties

There are a host of reasons why difficulties can and are experienced with ROI Tools.  One reason is that a ROI Tool may not be treated as a product and therefore its benefits are underestimated, misunderstood, not used to its optimum, or simply ignored. Some companies spend time, money and effort in developing their ROI Tool, and then leave it at that stage.

They do not conduct any further investigation into what the sales force require of it, and this may result in there being no further modifications, testing or development to the ROI System which may, ultimately result in not being used to its optimum by the sales force.  If this happens the ROI Tool may get a bad reputation, or worse it gets neglected, and withers away.

Another notable reason is that the ROI Tool is difficult to use, or explain, not only to partners of the company, but also to future sales prospects, or customers.  Trying to justify economic concepts is difficult enough to begin with and a lot of ROI Tools are weighed down with unrelated entities, or bits needed to operate it,  which only adds to the perception that it is complex and difficult to use or understand, and if not trained properly, is unfortunately the case.

Missing it with the Prospect

In some instances, salespeople are not trained properly on the ROI System and don’t know how to use it in a confident manner, showing the client believable data, and the client may then become suspicious of it.  Confidence must come from the sales team who should have a very clear understanding of the tool themselves in order to relay this to the client.

To answer the potential clients question of “what return will I get from my investment”, will rely on whether or not the data is believable to the client, and just buy implementing the tool at the beginning of a products lifecycle, could make it easier to answer their question.