Introduction
Webs Analytics and site search solutions are becoming increasingly important to make several vital decisions in an e-business environment. Especially, for Small and Medium Enterprises, these solutions if implemented and utilized properly will add significant value for increasing customer conversions. In this article, we will briefly focus on the advantages these solutions bring in to SME e-businesses and how it helps them in planning better marketing strategies.
Google Analytics
Businesses are growing increasingly competitive and they need to utilize every small piece of information received from their websites to convert more customers for their business. In this context, Google Analytics- a powerful web analytical tool helps understanding the behavior pattern of website visitors.
Specifically, using this tool we can identify which online marketing initiatives are cost effective and see how visitors actually interact with your site. Make informed site design improvements, drive targeted traffic, and increase your conversions and profits
Data collected almost always includes web traffic reports that include e-mail response rates, direct mail campaign data, sales and lead information, user performance data such as click heat mapping, or other custom metrics as needed. This data is typically compared against key performance indicators for performance, and is critical in improving a website or marketing campaign’s audience response which in turn could lead to better customer conversions.
Google Analytics helps businesses generate detailed statistics about visitors to a website like:-
- Duration of stay on the website
- Visitor’s geography details
- Webpages receiving the most hits
- Statistics of online advertisement programs
By using above analysis, marketers can improve their campaigns, as well as find unexpected sources of quality visitors.
How companies benefit:-
- Sale
- Lead Generation
- Viewing a specific page
- Downloading a specific file
Google Search Solutions
Google offer compelling search solutions for organizations that have significant piles of documents, a desire to customize the presentation of search results that can be used on their own websites and servers.
To briefly introduce search solutions offered by Google, one is a full fledge version and other is a mini-version. Former is capable of indexing anywhere between 500,000 to 30 Million documents and is apt for large online retailers. Whereas, Google Mini is aimed at SME’s, can index 300,000 documents.
We will briefly discuss the features of Google mini and how it can help SME’s attract, convert and retain online customers without deviating from its core objective of providing focused results instantaneously..
1. Search
- Precision Search
Search functionality identifies the keywords provided by users to be searched for, which includes identifying the singular word for a plural entry, the correct spelling for a mis-spelt word and the synonyms for a word. Search results include synonyms, similar words and also take care of singular/plural forms of the word by prefixing a tilde (~) to the search keyword
- Directory Search
Users navigate through the various directories (categories) available on a site and search within the selected category.
- Search within Search Results
Users filter search results by searching further within an available set of search results.
- Auto-Suggestion/Recommend-as-you-Type
Users are displayed a list of partial matches on entering a search keyword when it is entered.
2. Search Results Delivery
Delivery of search results are universal; meaning it will search across all its content sources, compare and rank all the information in real time, and deliver a single, integrated set of search results that offers users precisely what they are looking for. Some of its benefits are:-
- Multifaceted Browsing
This methodology provides context context-sensitive choices during this entire browsing-searching process, thereby gently guiding the user to the eventual product they are searching for. Such an approach avoids the dreaded "Result not found" result and always has something relevant to show to the user
- Dynamic Merchandising
Dynamic Merchandising enables websites to automatically make personalized product recommendations — one reason for this type of merchandising is mimicking competitors and simplest reason would be to offer choices to customers to make their purchasing decision easier.
Some companies offer product suggestions based on the purchases of other people who bought the same item; Amazon.com was one of the first to adopt this practice. Other companies adopt the automatic cross-sell recommendations based on what the customer has already chosen to buy. Displaying products the customer last viewed or bought and making product suggestions via e-mail based on past purchases are other examples of dynamic merchandising.
Online companies implement some basic rules that specify a product, category, date range and activate or deactivates the rule, when required. The products in the search results that satisfy a rule are highlighted or displayed at the top of the list. Some examples could be:-
- Top Sellers
This list includes the top selling products for a certain time period. It gets updated on a daily basis
- Categories
This includes the categories to be promoted over a date range
- Top Rated
This list contains the products rated highly by other users
- Cross-Sell Recommendation
This list contains recommendations of what other users have recently purchased
- Enlarging Search Results on Mouse-Over
When a mouse-over happens over a search result, the details of the result are zoomed to the user. Users view most of the important details of a search result without leaving the results page
- Search Results Sorting
Search results can be sorted based on criteria’s like price range, relevance, date and any other criteria, depending on the site.
- Search Results Rating
Users can rate and post reviews on the search results. Rating can be given between 1 and 5 stars to rate a result. These ratings affect the relevance of a search result for a keyword used.
- Reporting
Some of the standards reports provided by Google include:
-Total number of searches and unique queries
-Number of searches on a particular day
-Average number of searches at different hours of the day
-Top 100 keywords and queries
3. How companies benefit:-
1. Precision Search
Online retailers can increase the benefit to their customers who will experience precision and agility while performing search operations
2. High Degree of relevance
Produces results that match all search terms including results that match to close variations of keywords you enter
3. Snippet view in advance
Snippet views are available in advance of text that matches the search query. This sneak preview gives you a good idea if a page or product is going to be relevant or not
4. Increase in conversion rates
Usually when a customer is searching for a product and retrieves the relevant product with no effort, the chances of converting that search to a sale are very high.
5. Low-cost implementation
Google Mini search solution for searching 50,000 documents cost $2000. Additional versions can search up to 300,000 documents. With the help of a good Web 2.0 solutions provider you can implement this solution and can introduce a nimble, productive and relevant search solution to your online customers.
If analytical solution is integrated with a search solution, the results can become more constructive. These solutions compliment each other to give you the right metrics to improve the online customer experience resulting in increased business
Integrating Google Analytics with Mini results in following benefits:
- Enhanced Conversion Analysis
Correlation benefits that link specific search results pages with particular visitor actions, site goals and session data. Searches performed on the Google Mini, as well as navigation to and from the search results page, can be studied through Analytics reports to determine which keywords are most effective.
- Search Performance Metrics
The popularity of search terms can be compared across search results pages as well as across your entire site. A variety of Google Analytics reports also provide three vital statistical reports: Exit Percentage (% Exit), Pageviews, and Average Time. These three numbers can provide insight into site search performance by addressing how users respond to search results.
Summary
Using a combination of Google Analytics and Website search solutions, SME companies can not only derive benefits of receiving detailed metrics of customer behavior patterns but can also offer a precise search mechanism that results in attracting, converting and retaining more online customers
