Peter Grandstaff Web Engineering

• 30Mar

  Conversion Tracking You Can Do Yourself, Cheap

  Small Business No Comments

  This is a follow-up to Is your business converting as well as it could?.

  To figure out your conversion rate you need two numbers.  You need to know how many total times you had the opportunity to make a conversion – e.g. website visitors, phone calls, or walk-in customers.  I’ll refer to this number as impressions for the sake of clarity.  You also need to know the number of successful conversions.

  Note: Be sure to measure these over the same time period!

  Then there’s a little math.  Don’t worry, I’m a professional.  Whip out your calculator and key in:

  
  That will give you your conversion rate.  Bump the decimal place to the right two spaces and you’ll have it as a percentage.

  Example: Your website got 328 visits and you made 16 sales.  16 divided by 328 equals 0.04878.  Bump the decimal over and you have a 4.878% conversion rate.

  Okay, that’s the math.  What about getting those numbers?  Obviously, if you have an ecommerce site it’s pretty easy to figure out the number of visitors and the number of sales.  It’s a little trickier if customers visit your website, then call in an order or visit the store.

  The answer here is training.  Train your staff to ask callers how they found you.  Train your clerks to ask while they ring someone up.  You can keep a clipboard by the register and the phone where your staff can mark down the answers.  Heck, you could even use a fancy spreadsheet.

  Spend some time figuring out how to phrase your question.  Be specific.  You probably don’t want to ask your regulars “How did you hear about us?”  You’ll do better with “How did you find us today?”

  If you’re tracking phone conversions be sure to tally how many total calls there were in addition to the number of sales made on the phone and how people found your number.

  Another option is to get an 800 number that forwards to your main line.  Then put that number on your website instead of your regular number.  Now you can track the number of calls that came from your website.  Of course, that’s another monthly expense.

  Now, on the web there are a lot of ways to track conversions.  For instance, you can define goals and funnels in Google Analytics or use Google Conversion Tracking. There are great click-tracking systems you can install like Crazy Egg or ClickTale. That’s a separate article though.

  This post first appeared in my e-mail newsletter.

  Tags: conversion, metrics, newsletter, small business

• 16Feb

  Is your business converting as well as it could?

  Small Business 2 Comments

  What do I mean by converting?  I mean converting browsers into buyers.

  A conversion is when someone looking at your offerings decides to take the action you want them to take, i.e. making a purchase or providing you with their contact information.  On a website, the conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who make a purchase or give you their e-mail address.

  

  When you know what your conversion rate is and what the average value of a conversion is, you can calculate return on investment, ROI, very accurately.  When you know your ROI you can make the most informed and profitable decisions about the allocation of your marketing budget.  The higher your conversion rate the greater your ROI.

  Next month I’ll get into measuring conversion rates, and I’ll have a special offer for newsletter subscribers who want some help getting a system in place to provide these metrics.  Now, I want to tell you about how to increase that conversion rate.

  Keep reading »

  Tags: conversion, newsletter, optimization, small business

• 05Jan

  Does your small business have room to grow, horizontally?

  Small Business No Comments
  

  The sky's the limit when you expand toward the horizon.

  There are two directions to grow your business, vertically and horizontally.  Vertical growth is selling more to your existing market and expanding your share of that market.  Horizontal growth is selling new products or services experiences to your existing market and adapting your offerings to fit new markets.  At least that’s the way I look at it.  An MBA would tell you that horizontal growth is all about acquiring companies in other sectors.  That’s not very useful to most small businesses.

  When you start thinking about growing your business horizontally it’s really helpful to properly understand what it is you’re selling.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m sure you have a masterful understanding of your products and the services you offer.  

  Keep reading »

  Tags: Marketing, newsletter, small business

• 06Oct

  Stand Out to Take the Lead – Newsletter 9/2009

  Small Business No Comments

  

  I have a question for you this month.

  How many marketing messages (commercials, phone calls, junk mail, web ads, everything.) do you think the average American encounters every day? Seriously, stop reading for a second, and take a wild guess.  Once you have your guess, read on for the answer.

  Marketing is everywhere.  Can you think of a single website that doesn’t have marketing in it?  They are few and far between.  You can’t drive down the street without seeing some marketing.  Check your mail or pick up the phone, and it’s there.

  Our brains have learned that there are many many distractions in our lives that will lead us to parting with money or at least wasting time.  We’re used to it.  So we tune the vast majority of it out.  We are all skilled at ignoring the noise.

  Ready for the answer?  First, let me guess what you guessed.  I bet you guessed somewhere between three hundred and a thousand.  The actual number is a bit hard to measure as you might imagine.  According to Bill Glazer (A very successful marketer for those who don’t know the name) the average American encounters 3,191 marketing messages and ads per day.  According to J. Walker Smith of Chapel Hill, NC based Yankelovich, in a 2005 USA Today article, the number is between 3,500 and 5,000.  Today, it’s likely even higher.

  So, why did I spend all this time just to get to that number?  Because, I want you to understand just how vital it is for your marketing messages to break through the noise and get noticed.  Before long you’ll be competing with ten thousand other marketing efforts every day.  To really get that, it helps to think about the question before you learn the answer.

  You have to stand out from the competition to take the lead.  That goes for websites and search engine marketing in addition to everything else.  When your website uses the same looks, lines and messages as your competitors you stay a part of the background noise.  When your page comes up in search results it has to grab the searcher’s attention to get clicked.  (Being the first result is a great way to get noticed!)  When your pay per click ad shows up it will be right next to other ads.  It has to stand out.

  Get the point?

  So, how do you stand out?  I say be creative, bold, and real.  Bill Glazer will tell you to be outrageous.  Don’t be afraid to do something different.  Make bold statements.  Never underestimate the importance of an eye-catching headline.  Whatever you do, be real.  We’ve all learned to expect phoniness and misleading statements from marketing.  Stand out by being yourself: honest and human.

  One last tip.  Stop copying your competition’s marketing strategies.  The best that can come of that is that you’ll keep pace, a little behind the rest.  The worst case is when they’re copying you too.  You’ll end up with marketing about as effective as a photocopy of a photocopy is pretty.

  As usual, if you’d like some help making your business stand out, get in touch with me.  You can hit that reply button right now and get your message straight into my primary in-box.

  Know someone who might benefit from this message?  Forward it on!

  To the Success of Small Businesses Everywhere,

  Peter Grandstaff

  PS: Hang Gliding is amazing!  I can’t recommend Kitty Hawk Kites strongly enough.  They also provide a nice example of standing out.  Once you pay for your lesson you get all of it, no matter what.  If you can’t make it, the wind won’t cooperate, or you just chicken out they will give you a ‘wind-check’ to come back and get whatever you missed at no additional charge.  Wind-checks never expire, and they are transferable!  Have you ever heard of such a thing!?

  Tags: Marketing, newsletter, small business

• 31Aug

  August 09 Newsletter: School is Back, Attract Student Business!

  Small Business No Comments

  This month, I have some tips for marketing to the local student population and a little news about Google.  First, a quick update: Canine College is continuing to fill it’s board and train program.  If you missed last month’s story about their SEO and Pay-Per-Click campaigns, you can read it on my blog.  I’ll try to tone down the internet marketing and talk about strategies you can put to work today.

  School is winding back up, and the local economy is breathing a collective sigh of relief.  Around here many markets are kept above water by the steady influx of cash brought in by all the students.  Just counting the three largest universities here in the Triangle, there are suddenly 70,757 students around.  Hopefully, we’ve seen the worst of this recession, and we’ll see the horizon by the new year.

  What can you do right now to help your cash flow?  Promote.
  Keep reading »

  Tags: Marketing, newsletter, search engine optimization, small business

• 07Aug

  SEO & PPC Case Study: Success in the Recession – July 2009 Newsletter

  Search Engine Optimization, Small Business 1 Comment

  As promised, here is the web version of my July e-mail newsletter.  Read on to learn how a small business is making more sales now than before the recession! Thanks to SEO & PPC advertising this dog trainer is selling out his high-end program

  I bring news of success in this recession.  Best of all, the methods used are accessible to all of you.  If you’re not up to reading all this, scroll on down and at least check out the pictures.  Then, imagine what this could do for your business.

  SEO & PPC Case Study: Canine College of Chapel Hill

  Keep reading »

  Tags: case study, Marketing, newsletter, north carolina, ppc, recession, search engine optimization, small business

• 28Jul

  Newsletter Sneak Preview: Success in the Recession Case Study

  Search Engine Optimization, Small Business 3 Comments

  I’m putting the finishing touches on July’s Small Business Newsletter. Use the handy form to your left to get a copy delivered to your inbox!

  This month’s issue will feature a case study. I’ll explain how exactly one of my clients is doing more business now than he was before the recession!

  Keep reading »

  Tags: adwords, case study, google, ppc, search engine optimization, small business, Web Analytics

• 30May

  Google Wave Coverage – May 2009 eNewsletter

  Life, Small Business, Technology No Comments

  May sure has flown by.  I hope your month has been profitable.  Have you gotten Google Analytics set up on your site yet?  If you need some help, hit that reply button and let me know!  One of my clients is so excited by his Analytics data that he checks it first thing every morning.  It’s always a pleasure to see someone take the ball and run with it.  This month…

  Newsletter Contents

  • And now for something completely different…

  

  This month I resolved to exclude Google from the newsletter.  I was going to talk about customer retention strategies.  It’s all the rage these days, what with the economy and all.

  Then I watched a video on YouTube. This video blew my mind. It was the first announcement of a new Google product that will change the world, and how we communicate. So, I’ve decided to depart from my usual format and tell you about what I saw.
  Keep reading »

  Tags: email, google, google wave, newsletter, online media, privacy, search

• 21Dec

  Tuning In

  Small Business, Technology No Comments

  I’m sitting at my laptop.  My desktop is running Seagate DiscWizard.  It’s a handy utility that came with my new hard disk drive.  It’s copying my old hard drive onto the new 1 terabyte drive.  The old drive is a 200 gigabyte that has been making some funny noises lately.  It sounds a lot like cicadas.  A high pitch drone that fades in and out periodically.  So, I bought a new hard drive.

  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen someone loose a ton of important data from a hard drive failure… it’s never pretty.  That’s why I’m excited that I tuned in and heard my drive making this noise before it died.  I had time to get a replacement and save all my data.

  Keep reading »

  Tags: business, problemsolving, small business

• 27Sep

  Web design, SEO, Hosting, and more

  Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Small Business, Web Development No Comments

  Welcome to my website. Make yourself at home.

  I’m working furiously away at building this site, so please check back soon.

  If you’d like to be kept up to date you can sign up for my monthly newsletter on the left. I promise not to share your contact information with anyone else.

  Tags: Marketing, search engine optimization, web design, Web Development

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