There’s no shortage of data for the small business owner. Whether you hire a professional industry analyst to look at your business information, or do it yourself, statistics and reports can reveal valuable information. But making sure that information is enriched with knowledge is the difference between having numbers to hand and having vital data that could transform your business.
Many small businesses depend on their IT personnel to provide data that will enhance their business. However, there’s a difference between mere data and enriched information that improves performance. For instance, you might be surprised to find that page views are largely useless. This figure tells very little about how people are actually using your site, which is the most important information you can have. Data that leads to improvements is more than just information. It’s intelligence. There are many types of information which can help businesses become more intelligent.
Visitor flow
Visitor flow follows how users navigate your website. The most important point is to learn about where your customers enter your site, and where they leave. Simple numbers of visitors is not as useful. Let’s say that you are running an online store and that 350 visitors left your site on the ‘confirm order’ page. This might suggest there’s some type of sticking point related to this page. It might be that the wrong orders are loading. It might be that a sudden tax add-on that wasn’t fully clarified caused users to cancel the purchase. Regardless of the reason, this type of business intelligence may help you make positive changes in the online experience you create.
Traffic sources
Traffic sources tell you where your customers are coming from and therefore what’s driving people to your site. Wouldn’t it be helpful to know the type of sites which are leading to yours? With that information, you might step up advertising and marketing within those sites, and bring even more business your way. Traffic sources are also a great way to measure the effectiveness of advertising.
Keywords
When you know what keywords people use to find your business online, you can begin tailoring your pages to contain more of them. You can also begin applying those keywords in advertisements, banners, and promotional efforts you invest in online. By better meeting user desire and expectation you can raise your profile above that of competitors.
Conversion rates
Your business makes money when people buy your product or services. Conversion rates can help track users through the entire sales experience. By finding out key data about where users spend time online, where they enter the sales experience, and when they leave, you are better able to adjust your product or service, your presentation, and perhaps your website design. By finding peak points of purchase, you can pinpoint successful pages or links too. By finding weak points of purchase, such as abandoned online shopping carts, you might be alerted to tech problems or layout aspects that interfere with more robust conversion rates.
Bounce rates
Bounce rates reflect the number of users who visit your site but leave without looking at any other pages. In a best case scenario, it means they find what they are looking for on your site fast. In the worst case scenario, it means that your users lose interest immediately, and big changes on your site have to be made. A high bounce rate can be changed through rich content development that engages users to remain within your site, exploring what your business has to offer in terms of products and services, and more.
Bounce rates are a great example of the difference between metrics and information. IT might present stats that show 3,000 people are visiting a site each day. This might seem like good news, until it’s revealed that the bounce rate is 2,999. This is the difference between information and intelligence.
Business intelligence creates a better opportunity to maximize your production and profits. We can help in that process, so get in touch today.
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