If you are not monitoring and measuring, you are not successfully marketing, they say. Now when it’s about measuring, a plethora of norms and benchmarks are there for marketers to opt for. Probably, among the most basic ones is website tracking or analytics, more specifically. Time and again, we come across SMB owners who either fail to track their key site stats and usage figures, or, don’t really realize what they should be looking at even if they have some sort of analytics installed.

Most marketers point to the fact that lack of ‘measurement and analysis’ as one of the major hurdles they invariably face. Sure, for those businesses out there keen to grow and expand, precise tracking and proper conversion numbers are an absolute must to know things like which percentage of total sales leads are actually arriving through the site, or the lead generation via the landing page.

Conversions and ROI arithmetic

Companies survive, depending on how dynamic they are and how successfully they are being able to meet the needs of their prospects, especially online. But then the question is, how does a business know what exactly its customers want? Unless you know where sales leads are getting generated from, there is simply no way in which you can form a correct online marketing ROI.

If you are not aware of the return on investment parameters, your business profitability is going to get hit. There are many small business site owners, who boast about the number of visitors. However, not all of them can say the say same about the site conversion rate. They do not always have a clear idea of it.

Conversion rate is quite handy to separate mere ‘visits’ from the actual or serious ‘buyers’. It is essential for goal tracking. These vital leads can be anything right from a price quote to a whitepaper download or newsletter signups.  Anything where your users are required to divulge or share some information – personal or something related to their purchase preferences – in lieu of a service/demand fulfillment from you end – are conversions. It’s a vital step in direction of becoming a truly viable sales lead.

Learn to track your site usage pattern

Google Analytics is very effective for this kind of tracking. It’s customizable and free. Using it is easy and you can track each move that your visitors make and the actions they initiate. If someone arrives at your site’s landing page and clicks through to ‘know more’ page, you can count it as a positive development. If someone fills in a form and then downloads a PDF from your product folio, even better! These bits of information are readily and easily available inside Google Analytics.

These insights can be of help to work out the cost and of driving any qualified visitor to your website apart from studying the broader usage pattern, to determine what drives them. It helps you to realize where and how the acquisition cost outweighs the profit margin. A marketer will simply be groping in the dark and relying more on fate sans analytics and analysis. Both are necessary to accurately gauge the qualified leads and accordingly your online marketing strategy. Without accurate or detailed ballpark estimations, at least you cannot plan your future growth path.