Ways that Website Analytics Can Save Your Online Business

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Website analytics is probably the last thing an online business owner wants to worry about. With 15 things to do every day before 10 am and another 50 to do before you can call it a day, sitting down in front of a bunch of web traffic stats seems like a waste of time. While I agree with the sentiment, it’s completely wrong. In fact, website analytics should be the first and last thing you review every day and I’ll give you three reasons why:

1. Web Analytics Help You Detect Fraud and Incompetence

Have you hired an SEO expert? PPC marketer? Social media guru? If you have people on staff or retain contractors to help you with your site, website analytics are your best friend.

Forget about the reports these experts create because all stats and data can be manipulated or ommitted. What you need is raw, reliable data to calculate the ROI of the services you are paying for.

Specifically, programs like Google Analytics can help you quickly isolate specific traffic streams and provide a host of useful data to calculate ROI, including:

Conversion Rate of Specific Traffic Channels
Conversion Rate for Specific Targeted Keywords
Average Time on Site for Specific Traffic Streams
Bounce Rate for Specific Traffic Streams

Of course, the conversion rate data for specific traffic streams (or Internet marketing experts) will help you calculate the ROI. But the average time on site will also help provide a rough gauge of overall traffic strength. If a specific traffic channel can’t keep visitors on site for more than 2 minutes, the traffic is either weak or you have significant issues on your landing pages.

2. Web Analytics Help Assess Site Health

To put that another way, web analytics essentially help show you where you need to invest your money most to boost online profits. Specifically, website traffic analytics will help you assess:

A. Traffic Strength
B. Sales Funnel Effectiveness
C. Shopping Cart Function and Conversion Rate
D. Website Conversion Rate and Rates for Specific Services/Products

For instance, high bounce rates and low average time on site typically indicate weak traffic or exceptionally poor landing pages. You can confirm which by looking at the data for specific traffic streams to see if there are significant variations in performance. If there are, then the issue is likely a weak traffic stream but if all channels are doing poorly, it’s more likely to be landing page.

The point is, the data tell you what’s wrong with your site so you can best channel your investment dollars to the most critical areas.

3. Web Analytics Eliminates Needless Split Testing

In most cases, optimization of landing pages and product descriptions is completed via split testing. That is, decide what sales tool you want to test (like a headline or CTA) and then create a new one to split test against. If your new sales tool performs better, conversions will increase and your hard work rewarded. However, this is rarely how it works.

You see, the thing people always forget about split testing is it’s sheer expense. To statistically verify even a lead gen site with a non-monetized CTA, you need at least 1,000 visitors or more to each version.

So if you think a landing page or product description might have problems with the headline, value proposition, and credibility tools, that’s at least 3 tests you need to run at 2,000 visitors per test. At even $1 a click, you can see how that would get very expensive, very quickly.

And the worst part: You have no idea if the headline, value prop, or credibility tools are even suppressing conversions. You are just split testing one sales tool versus a new one and hoping for the best, seriously.

But with web analytics, you can pinpoint the issues and eliminate the guesswork saving loads in unnecessary testing costs and content creation.

In conclusion, web analytics really are vital to your online success because they provide you with an accurate assessment of site health and your investments in traffic generating services. If you don’t know the true health of your site, then how can you possibly know what it needs to grow and be more profitable?

How Do You Increase the Conversion Rates of Your E-commerce Business

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As an owner of an e-commerce business, you must be analyzing your website visitor data regularly. Have you ever wondered why the conversion rates are low? Out of the thousands of people visiting your website, why do only a few complete the purchase process? Why do a majority of them abandon the shopping cart midway?

The answer is simple. While browsing your e-commerce website, visitors are looking for credible information that convinces them about the benefits and value of purchasing your product or service. With the short attention spans and limited time that net-users have, they just move away if they do not find what they are looking for. Of course, you cannot provide all the information at one go, and the visitors might have specific queries for which they need answers to.

Convert them when they are interested. Visitors come to your e-commerce website when they want more information about your services, when they want to compare your services with those of your competitors, or when they want to make a purchase. Whatever be the reason, the key is that they seek INFORMATION. By proactively offering the right information in the right manner, you can see positive change in the conversion rates.

The Solution: 24×7 Virtual Customer Support

How would you like if you visit an e-commerce website, and you get all the support you need, in a friendly manner through representatives of that company? Would it not impress you if you have the option of contacting them through any channel, be it live chat, telephone, or email, and getting complete support while you make your decision of whether to make a purchase or not even in the wee hours of the night?

You can also offer the same superior level of support to your e-commerce website visitors through 24×7 Virtual Customer Support. You do not need to have a complete support team in-house, as it might prove costly and tedious. You can outsource your customer support process and get all the benefits with investment within your budget.

You can hire the services of a suitable partner that can offer all types of support from a single front, with people who understand your product or service and hold-hands with your prospects while they visit your website and make a purchase.

By offering complete ONLINE CHAT SUPPORT, PHONE SUPPORT, EMAIL SUPPORT, and assisting during the purchase process through LIVE ORDER TAKING, you can make your prospects feel comfortable while they select your company for their needs.

Interacting with a responsive live person is always better than automated replies. Studies have shown that cross-sell and up-sell rates, and shopping cart amounts increase if visitors can interact with the representatives of the company while they visit their website.

With professional 24×7 customer support you can get the edge your competitors are struggling for and ensure that all genuine visitors get the attention and the service they deserve.

How Square Peg Web makes E-Commerce work for you.

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Building an E-Commerce site and the things you need to bear in mind when doing so. How often have you had a wish list about random things that you wanted to happen and there must have been more than a dozen times when you would have thought “I wish I was able to do this on my website or that”? Times have changed and your thoughts need not be locked up in your head and be erased over time rather we like “Square Peg Web” help you realize your thoughts and dreams into actions and the outcome is a perfect website that draws in the required traffic so you can go laughing all the way to the bank.

A few things to bear in mind when starting out on an E-Commerce site: Do you have good suppliers who would be able to offer you products? This may seem as a very simple question but it could get complex if you do not have someone reliable to offer you stuff in a short span of time. Your pricing is another factor that decides the business, e-commerce has made it possible and much easier for customers to compare prices at a blink of an eye hence your price should be competitive and very transparent to the customer. Customers are the back bone of any e-commerce site and customer relations play a huge role in getting you the clientele. Whether it is E-Mails, FAQs, Forums or Live Chat rooms: integrating all of these into your site would help you wade through competition much better. The back end can also be the heart of your business: the fulfillments, returns, customer service all take place here and if things go awry in this department it could mar the relationship with a customer forever. The other things that can be included in your e-commerce site are options to send gifts, programs for affiliates and distributors, special discount offers, buyer repeat programs and seasonal or periodic sales depending on what will grab the market at a particular time.

E-Commerce: Easy or Hard? In everything that we do there is bound to be a positive and negative aspect to it, the same applies to the easy and hard part of a business and can e-commerce be far behind? E-Commerce is all about getting your business in the right track online and getting you the targeted audience. Some of the things that could be a tad difficult when considering E-Commerce are the amount of traffic that comes to your website, making traffic come to your website for a second time, going along and overcoming competition or rather differentiating yourself from the crowd, making people purchase things from your website, we all understand that we can steer the traffic to our website but getting people to actually purchasing from them is the other side of the story.
The last would be to integrate your existing web site to an e-commerce website. There are many websites that have sprung up and getting the right amount of people could be the biggest hassle of e-commerce however; the positive side to e-commerce for small businesses and individuals are creation of a website, taking orders and accepting payments.

If you have read this far, read further for we have great news for you. E-commerce and its aspects were discussed for you to have know-how as to how things happen and not to scare you off. Square Peg Web can put all your fears to rest and we at Square Peg Web assure you that you can sit back and enjoy the profits that come your way once you have used our services. Square Peg Web does not promise you the stars but we show you how you can get there without much of stress or worry. All the elements of E-Commerce are with Square Peg Web and with professionals who work for you with dedication and efficiency; your site would be ready in no time. Square Peg Web offers you everything that you need to build your site; starting from the basics like web hosting to e-commerce, Square Peg Web guides you to get there. No matter how stiff the competition is Square Peg Web makes sure that your site gets the required traffic and your dreams materialize. It is everyones right to dream and Square Peg Web makes sure your dream turns into reality by making sure Square Peg Web provides you with all that you are looking for.

Your satisfaction is our success and Square Peg Web firmly believes that each customer is a part of us and we take personal interest in building your website the way you want it to be. Once Square Peg Web develops your website and have it online our job just begins right there. Square Peg Web spreads the word of your company by means of Search Engine Optimization and though Square Peg Web does not give you the guarantee that your website would be numero uno (Actually no one can guarantee that) but Square Peg Web assures to get you onto the first page of popular search engines and that in itself would do a great deal of good for your business. Our team of SEO experts at Square Peg Web makes use of proven methods to improve your rankings on search engines which helps in increasing traffic to your site. Square Peg Web takes pride that we are not like other companies who make use of the cookie cutting methods of pricing rather we tailor our services to suit your requirements as each individual is different from another. The same goes for business no two businesses can be the same.

To sum things up Square Peg Web provides you with everything that you need to make your business grow. Whether it is just minimal SEO work, Pay per Click Management, Local Search Optimization or Social Media Optimization; Square Peg Web has the expertise and know-how to get you the results no matter how tedious they are. Even if you are not sure as to what you want, we can still help you with that as well. Every time you talk with someone from our team from Square Peg Web, you are talking with a person who has vested interest in your business and desires to make your website everything that you want it to be.

When Will The Fed Increase Interest Rates

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Palos Verdes, CA. There is an old German saying “postponed but not nullified”. This is true for the Feds decision to keep its central bank rates unchanged in September and October. The Feds vote against hiking rates surprised everyone less than did the reasons why.

It seems the bench line of the unemployment rate has been downgraded in favor of actual inflation. This approach has caused some uncertainty in the real estate markets for the following reasons:

1) The Fed always runs the risk of getting it wrong, as it might constitute either too early or too late a move. To minimize any adverse impact, they create frameworks with policy objectives that are linked to intermediate targets. This does not eliminate uncertainty, but it at least reduces it as to how the Fed will react to future events. This reaction function cannot, and should not be, cast in stone, as the links from intermediate targets to policy goals are themselves uncertain and subject to change.

2) The Feds mandate is to create maximum employment with stable prices, which they define as 2% inflation. Fed officials have argued that they cant wait for actual inflation to breach the 2% level, given the long and variable lags from policy to prices. As a result, they have often indicated that they will look out for signals of future inflation, the first being the unemployment rate, and use this as the intermediate target for setting rates.

According to economist Robert Stammers, interest rates, especially the rates on interbank exchanges have a profound effect on the value of income-producing real estate. Because the influence of interest rates on an individual’s ability to purchase residential properties is so profound, many people incorrectly assume that the only deciding factor is in the mortgage rate. However, mortgage rates are a major factor for influencing property values. Because interest rates also affect capital flows, the supply and demand for capital and investors’ required rates of return on investment, interest rates will drive property prices in a variety of ways.

Economist Stammers go on to say to understand how government-influenced interest rates, capital flows and financing rates affect property values, you should have a basic understanding of the income approach to real estate values. The income approach provided by appraisers of income rental properties is the discounted cash flow analysis.
In simple terms, the valuation starts by forecasting property income, which takes the form of anticipated rental income. Then, by taking all property-level costs, including the financing cost, the analyst arrives at the net operating income (NOI), or cash flow remaining after all operating expenses.
By subtracting all capital costs, as well as any investment capital to maintain or repair the property and other non-property-specific expenses from NOI, the result is the net cash flow available to investors. By discounting the cash flow stream for a given investment period, the property value is determined.
Demand for real estate is related to changes in affordability. The fewer people able to purchase homes, the greater the demand for rentals and vice versa. Another important factor affecting supply and demand is the availability and cost of mortgage money. Interest rates play an important role in determining demand.

In the final analysis, w still believe that Fed action will take place during the coming winter season.

Mobile Commerce Platforms – Facts to Consider

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With mobile commerce becoming advanced each day, retailers are becoming eager to branch out into the mobile web scenario. To make their products and services more reachable, new mobile commerce platforms need to be developed. There are numerous players in the market who provide platforms like Magneto, ATG, Marketlive, Escalate Retail, and Demandware. Platforms are being offered within the app through the mobile web combining browser detection and CSS, through services that allow mobile app usage, and through partnerships with third parties.

However, there are some factors that need to be kept in mind while retailers are looking to provide this mobile ecommerce solution:
Attention must be paid to the cost. Although the forum is expanding, the ROI will be significantly less due to lack of direct mobile transactions. M-commerce will surely be beneficial to the multichannel customer experience, but there is no parameter against which we can measure the benefits.
The management of the mobile site has to be integrated into the management tools and existing site merchandising. Adequate support must be available for content management, product content, category management, and order management.
Any mobile website needs to be maintained on a regular basis. The inventory, price, and production information must be up-to-date, but it also needs to include brand assets, product data, and assortment taxonomy. A constant synchronization needs to be maintained with the platform provider. Agencies and firms are cashing in on marketplace feeds or retailers affiliate to power the mobile websites but this has a drawback too. The feeds are often a part of the total assortment and may not have catalog management features.
The payment options must be made extremely easy. Users should be able to conduct transactions quickly using secure and PCI compliant webservices. That is why Apple has tasted success with their iPhone or iPod Touches.
The foundation of the operating systems of phones frequently undergoes changes with OS versions, new devices, and ecosystems. The management needs to be done pro-actively and the providers must help their customers to navigate easily.
Order management and customer care needs to be effectively coordinated. If this is not done, then the rate of customer satisfaction will start to drop and they will be roped in by the other players. Ideally, a constant and portable cart should be present that allows customers to shop via mobile and web and to be able to access via the other channel makes the entire procedure simple and easy for them. With the help of a consistent customer authentication capability, the multichannel effect of mobile commerce can be easily measured.

Mobile commerce platforms
have been developed and tested successfully but they still have a long way to go in terms of performance. Industry experts say that the current infrastructure of m-commerce platforms is not suitable to keep up with the demands that are increasing each day. A lot of evaluation and upgrading needs to be done immediately so that the implementation can be done in the proper way.