Friday, July 30, 2010

How To Track Website Traffic Without Spending Money

How many people visit your website?
What city do they come from?
How long do they spend on each page?
Which page is your most popular?
Are people coming to your website through search engines like Google or Yahoo?

These are all important questions that you need to know about your website. And they're all available to you...with the right software.

By "right software" you'll be glad to know we mean "free software". Google Analytics (GA) is a free tracking software that you install into your website so that you can keep track of website statistics. In this article we'll explain how to setup Google Analytics, and how to use it effectively.

How to Install Google Analytics

The first thing you'll need to do is get a Google account if you don't already have one. Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/sign_up.html to set up your account. Make sure you use a valid email address when you sign up because you will have to verify your account. Google will send you an email, and you simply click the link to verify.

Once you've verified your account, go to http://www.google.com/analytics/. Click on "Access Analytics" then click the "Sign Up" button. That should lead you to a screen that looks like the one below:

Google Analytics

Simply type in your web address, give your account a name (whatever you want, so you can recognize it) and click "continue".

On the next 2 screens, type your first and last name, and agree to Google's terms, and your account is created.

The next screen gives you a block of code that you have to copy and paste into the HTML of your website. In the most recent version of Google's code, this goes immediately before the closing head tag. Once you have the code on every page of your website, click "Save and Finish". After a couple days you should be able to start tracking visitors.

How to Use Google Analytics

One practical use is that you can track your marketing at a glance. Below is a graph from Google Analytics that shows web traffic to our website:



You'll notice right away that we got a little bit more traffic about midway on the timeline, and then shortly after that we had a large spike in traffic. It turns out that the large spike is when we had our last workshop, and the days before it is when we had email blasts advertising it.

You can track how many visitors came to your site because of different actions that you take. Whether it's Facebook ads, an email newsletter, an event, etc...you'll be able to instantly know how successful your marketing efforts are.

What Pages Are Being Visited?

One of the most basic things you can see with a statistics program for your website is what pages are being visited. The graph below is an example:

Measure Website Statistics

This is an extremely valuable tool, not just because you can see what pages your visitors are looking at, but how much time they spend looking at them. Reports like the ones above can help give you clues about how your website is working, or not working for you.

Let's give a real life example. One of the pages on your website is titled "Information", and you notice that it isn't being visited very much. This usually means that the link leading to it isn't generating interest ("Information" is a little vague and boring), or that people are having a hard time finding it. You can try renaming it from "Information" to something more specific like "Get Directions", or try making it stand out more so people notice it and will click it.

Custom Reports


We definitely recommend creating custom reports with Analytics. With the drag-and-drop functionality it only takes a couple minutes to set it up, and it really provides you with some very nice data about your website.

One custom report that we use shows how many unique visitors come to our website, then how many pages those unique visitors visit, then how many of those visitors are new as opposed to returning visitors. Then we show how many pages are visited followed by the average time they spend on the website as a whole.

You can get more in-depth than that if you want. As part of that same report we know what city our visitors came from, how they found our website, and what search phrase they used to find us (if they used a search engine like Google or Yahoo).

Setting "Goals"

A good way to track the success of your website is to set "Goals" through Google Analytics. You can easily set them up, and it's easy to keep track. Some ideas of what to track are:
  • Newsletter subscriptions
  • Social media interactions (if you have a Facebook button, see how many people are clicking it)
  • Sales
  • Downloading a brochure or catalog
  • Time spent on a particular page
Hopefully this will give you a broad enough overview on how helpful Google Analytics can be. Good luck!

Benefits of Using PayPal

Selling products and services online can be a very useful thing to do. Many businesses and non-profits want to be able to let customers use their credit card to pay online rather than taking payments over the phone or in person.PayPal Buy Now Button

One option is to have a full blown shopping cart system...and that's certainly ideal. But a good (much cheaper) alternative is PayPal. Fresh Look Web Design recommends PayPal for any organization that wants to accept credit card payments while cutting costs and minimizing risk.

No Risk

With PayPal's Website Payments Standard program, which is what we are highlighting here, there are no start-up fees, monthly fees, or cancellation fees. So for businesses or non-profits that want to try out the concept of accepting online credit card payments, PayPal is a good option. There is very little to no risk involved.

It's Easy for You

To use PayPal only requires a familiarity with the computer. You don't need to understand code or anything technical. You simply follow the instructions, and they provide you with the code to put into your website. If you maintain your own website, simply copy and paste what they give you. If someone else maintains it for you, just copy and paste the code into an email or Word Document and send it to your web developer.

It's Easy for Your Customers

PayPal does not require your customers to sign-up to pay online. All they do is enter in their credit card information and they're done. No hassle.

Who should use PayPal?

Anyone can use PayPal, but we think it's especially useful for:
Donate Now
Example
  • Non-profits who want their users to easily donate
  • Organizations with only a few products to sell
  • Organizations with a limited budget
What does PayPal cost?

The standard option with accepting credit cards with PayPal is called Website Payments Standard. The pricing details are below:
  • No setup fee
  • No cancellation fee
  • No monthly fee
  • Fee of $0.30 per transaction
  • Additional fee of 2.9% per transaction (or if you have high monthly sales volume that percentage can drop, see table below)





















YOUR MONTHLY SALESYOUR FEE PER TRANSACTIONEXAMPLES
$0 to $3,0002.9% + $0.30$3.20 fee on a $100 sale
$3,000+ to $10,0002.5% + $0.30*$2.80 fee on a $100 sale
$10,000+2.2% + $0.30*$2.50 fee on a $100 sale
$100,000+Call 1-888-818-3928


For eligible non-profits, the rates go down to 2.2% for monthly donations up to $100,000, and 1.9% for more than $100,000 in monthly donations.

What this means is that if you don't any products or receive any donations than you don't pay anything. The downside of course is that you do lose a percentage on every sale. But if you can encourage more sales/donations than you would otherwise with no online payment option than it's definitely worth it.

So whether you want to use PayPal to test the waters of online payments, or as a permanent solution to your website, PayPal is an excellent alternative for those looking to save perhaps several hundred dollars on a shopping cart. We hope that you can use it to make your business even more successful, and if you have any experiences you would like to share, please let us know!

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Create a Facebook Page for Business

This is a simple step-by-step article on how to get your business or non-profit set up on Facebook. Keep in mind that Facebook updates their procedures and processes constantly, but this is accurate as of when we posted it.

1. If you don't already have one, create a personal profile with Facebook. If you have an account already, go to Step 4.

Go to this link - http://www.facebook.com and create a personal page. You need to provide your name, birthday, and valid email address.

2. In the next 2 or 3 screens, you don't need to necessarily provide any personal information that you don't want to. You don't have to search for friends. We do recommend posting a profile picture of yourself. Click Save and Continue when you've added your profile picture.

3. Facebook will send you an email asking you to confirm your new account. Make sure you check your email, open it, and click the link and confirm the account.

4. Now that your personal profile is set up and you have access to Facebook, you can create your business page. Follow this link to start with the setup - http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php





5. The image above is what the next screen looks like. Choose a category for your Page. If it's a non-profit, choose the second option. Give your page a name, preferably just the name of your business. Click on the checkbox. Click "Create Official Page".

6. Add a logo by hovering the mouse over the question mark, and select "Change Picture".

7. Click on the Info box and update your contact information.

8. On the left side of the screen is a box that starts with "Write something about...". Click that box to write a quick little introduction to your Facebook Page. Include a link to your website.

You are set up! You can add pictures, suggest your page to friends, promote with an ad, or link it to your Twitter account. Have fun!