Making Future Forecasts With Present Statistics Of Sri Lanka

A tiny island country located in the middle of the mighty Indian Ocean, situated just below the Indian subcontinent, Sri Lanka has diverted the attention of the world towards itself, quite a few times in the past. The reasons may have been myriad – ranging from politics to ethical issues and the most delicate infrastructural, economic and social welfare growth to endemic natural resources. Let’s put all these facts aside for the moment and keep all our focus on the ongoing development of Sri Lanka in terms of Social, Infrastructural and Educational Interfaces.

It is always better to start with statistics, isn’t it? So this is what I accumulated…

In 2014, Sri Lanka claims to have the highest literacy rate of 98.1% as compared to other developing nations which is extremely high. Take a look at the image given below which shows the country’s triumphant position in terms of the literacy rate as compared to its counterparts and other developing nations.

Source: UN Human Development Report 2011

Sri Lanka boasts of a total population of 21 million. From these 21 million people only 20% have access to the internet and are using relative gadgets and utilities without interruption. Scrutinizing the Internet penetration rate of Sri Lanka, I deduct that it is well ahead of its counterparts in South Asia like India, Pakistan, The Maldives, Nepal, and Bangladesh etc. Bearing only a 0.81% of annual population growth, the country maintains an internet penetration growth rate of 9% annually (which is massive). However, this is not to be taken as a booster, but as a motivation to match the current internet penetration rate of Asian tigers like Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Source: Internet Users by Country (2014) (Adapted)

So much for the statistics, now let’s keep it aside for a moment. We deducted so far that around 20% of Sri Lanka has access to The internet – So what is this 20% up to? I try to unveil the trends, facts, and related marketing implications one by one – check it out.

Mobile Traffic

When I mentioned ‘revealing the facts,’ I wasn’t only referring to facts like Search engines, Browsers, Social Media Platforms and eCommerce etc. In Sri Lanka, electronic devices play a vital role when trying to figure the facts related to the digital reach of the country.

As per StatCounter (one of the largest web analytics services provider), Sri Lanka has surpassed the percentage of online access via desktop (43%) by a massive (57%) from mobile devices such as Smartphones, tablets, phablets etc. In other words, almost 2.5 million users access the internet by using mobiles in Sri Lanka. Back in July 2012, only 16% of Sri Lankans used mobile devices and 84% of them accessed the internet via desktops. Interestingly in the global context, desktops are still the major web traffic source with a whopping 65%.

Can this be taken as an indication that Sri Lankan businesses have to think differently? Consumers are looking for more convenience by using smartphones. When the internet is simply accessible from the pockets of the consumers, what are Marketers supposed to do?

Becoming Social

In contrast to what our grandparents know as being sociable, our generation is giving a new definition to being social. We are socializing with people even remotely while in front of our computers or mobiles. This may be a blessing or a curse, that’s up to each and every Sri Lankan to decide.

With approximate 2,300,000 users (not considering the fake profiles), which is about 11.5% of Sri Lanka’s total population, Facebook is outperforming any other Social Media platform in Sri Lanka.  Interestingly as reported by Read Me, an IT online portal in Sri Lanka, there is 1,400,000 male users and 720,000 female users. From this 33% are within the age group of 25-34 years.

Though these latest trends in the Digital arena are becoming more and more ambivalent, let us consider them as opportunities and not complicate matters any further!So what are the marketing implications of these changing trends and growths in Sri Lanka?

Marketing Job Roles in Sri Lanka

The mammoth growth of the internet population of Sri Lanka does not mean you have to quit all your offline marketing efforts and focus only on online channels. Instead, the scenario is becoming complicated and the role of the Marketing personnel is now exigent. In the near future, it is expected that there will be no distinguishing between the roles of marketing staff as Traditional Marketer and Digital Marketer. Alternatively he / she should be able to merge both the channels, online and offline at the right ratio. A particular brand should be visible not only in smart phones, tabs, and desktops, but also equally it should be seen by the consumers in the newspapers, posters, direct mail, and such means. But the important thing that should be kept in mind is the marketing communication message that is to be seen by the potential consumers should be the same in both the channels, but appropriately adapted to the nature of the channel / device it is being communicated through.

Reaching the online population which is 20% at this moment is not enough for a business. It is important to reach the rest of the 80% who will also soon be a part of the ever growing Sri Lankan internet population.

The Websites and Marketing Campaigns

The thinking pattern of having two websites, one for desktop and one for mobiles is no longer even a valid thought. One unique website that the businesses are going to have should be mobile friendly. In the sense, it should not be responsive only for certain dimensions of smartphones. It should be a responsive website for tabs too.

As a consequent of the ever rising mobile users in Sri Lanka, redesigning your website itself or creating a Facebook fan page will not bring business. There are certain strategic movements that should be taken at a rapid pace just like how the internet is rising and mobile devices are influencing the users / consumers.

Similar to your offline marketing strategies like penetrating the market with a lower price, augmenting the product with value additions, distributing not only via own branded store but also through other retail outlets, promoting and positioning only one or two USPs despite all the features of the product, and much more, you have to decide on your strategy to enter the dynamic digital marketing fraternity too.

In most cases, it can be seen that brands with no proper strategic online marketing plans and contingency plans start ad-hoc online marketing campaigns and suffer from tarnished brand reputations.

You have to decide whether you are going to use online marketing as a mean of brand awareness only or as an additional income generating source or the sole selling platform. Depending on your objective your plans should vary adopting relevant online media channels.

Online marketing is not a “me-too product” where you simply copy what others do. Going “Digitalised” does not mean designing a website and creating a Facebook page anymore. Mind you, the efforts without adequate ROI are devastating!

Social Media Marketing in the Sri Lankan Context

It is widely prevalent that the brands who advertise / are active in Social Media profiles like Facebook and YouTube get offended at their marketing staff or agencies for not generating enough and more leads. They have to understand that Sri Lankans still show some degree of hesitation when it comes to making a purchase online. They widely use search engines and especially Social Media profiles to collect as much information as possible. Also, Social Media profiles may or may not work for the nature of your product. However social media profiles are the best in terms of creating and maintaining good rapport with your existing and future customers. Never expect money to flow from these platforms immediately. Instead distribute as much information about your brands as possible.

A recent survey done by Read Me shows surging results for the brands in Sri Lanka. 85% of the users are fans of local brands pages where a considerable 35% of them have liked more than 15 brand pages. Notably 45% of the respondents have responded that they would like to get information from these brands in their timeline. This is good news! Share your brand related message in a creative way for them to stop at your post while scrolling down in the timeline! Remarkably the survey also reveals that 78% of the respondents have admitted that they have been influenced by Facebook in making the purchase decision. Certainly this is great news for brands if this is true. The reason for mentioning “if it’s true” is we as Sri Lankans in most cases fail to reflect our real thoughts in surveys. 🙂

Online marketing is like a knife. You may cut multiple fruits and make a perfect fruit salad or you may end up in hurting yourself after all achieving nothing but getting hurt.  

Best Web Analytics Tools Review

 

Imagine a train running on a rail track without showing any indicators such as fuel used, distance covered, and engine temperature. Similarly, visualize an airplane in the sky moving towards the east without showing the engine’s temperature, speed, working status of the engines, and remaining fuel amount on the control board in the pilot’s cockpit. In both the situations, the driver or pilot does not know what is actually happening or how the train or plane is actually working.

Do you think such a lack of awareness can make the driver or pilot reach up to the intended destination safely and efficiently? Practically, the answer is ‘No’. Well, such an incidence can also happen with your online business site in case you do not know what is exactly happening on it once it goes online. To know what is happening at your site is nothing but analyzing it.

Questions That Inspire You to Analyze

Let us consider a real-life scenario of your business wherein you are a cloth boutique firm and I am an individual looking for some official as well as casual stuff from brands only, due to bad experience of using unbranded shirts and pants in the past. Now, I only need to look at branded items and I reach on your site through my friend’s recommendation.

Like me, there will be many more people out there who will be interested in your online store. So, how do ensure your brand awareness and popularity online? Well, this is ensured only if you find answers to the following queries, and improve them for brand popularity in case they are dissatisfactory:

• What is the site’s rank on the search engines result pages?
• How many visitors are landing at your site each day?
• How many new visitors are finding your site each day?
• Which pages are the visitors hitting the most?
• Which pages are encouraging purchase?
• Which products do the visitors love more?
• Is the Web site design effecting in keeping visitors for long on a page?
• From how many different sources does the traffic (visitors) come from?

Well, these queries are like indicators that show you what is happening on your site. They measure the performance of your site in the most relevant niche and give you a report of how successful or improvable the performance is! If you are not keen on doing this yourself, services like the Commence sales tracking and reporting services are available for hire. It’s best to leave it to the experts if you are not inclined yourself and there’s no shame in that.

Think a Minute

Do you think without the above answers, your online site can ever fulfill your business goals? If you do not track or monitor, it is like leaving the train (site) at its own speed (capabilities), which can get de-railed any time (lost online visibility or rank). After all, you should know where you are standing (site rank) to move further to the target!

Easiest Method that Encourage You to Analyze

Well, this is none other than the Web analytics tools! You can obtain quick answers to all the above questions by using a Web analytics tool. With a simple yet powerful design for notifying you about the site’s performance, these tools aid in tracking different statistics. Through these statistics, you can see the number of people viewing each page, sources from where they came from, and the number of site features that are most popular.

The Web analytic tools track key metrics of your site to measure traffic and Click-Through Rates (CTRs) for new page or content as well as comprehend your visitors’ requirements and behavior. These measurements tell you whether your site needs improvement or not!

Quick Aid

If the absence of above statistics keeps you awake even at night, you are truly eligible for getting a Web analytics tool.

Before I take you on a quick tour of some most important tools in the World of Web Analytics 2.0, let us find out the metrics that you got to measure with them.

Metrics (Data Indicators) That You Should Analyze

Think a Minute:

Do you think it makes sense to look for a tool when there is no idea of what information needs to be tracked? Well, the information that should be tracked can vary from simple visitors count to complex analysis of visitors’ behavior. Therefore, the question can arise as to which vital metrics should be paid attention to while analyzing the site through a tool. Here is a simple breakup of vital metrics:

Category 1: Primarily, you will have to know how many people are visiting your site. While this one seems easy to find, it is actually not. Metrics answering this query include:

• Unique Visitors: Shows the total number of visitors on the site during a set period. It does not include repeated visitors. This statistic reveals how effective your marketing efforts are in reaching a wider audience.
• Repeat Visitors: Shows the number of visitors coming back to your website multiple times. It indicates how big is your loyal fan base!

• Visits: Shows the number of visitors to a specific page or site. The trend in the number of visits over time shows you insight into your brand’s popularity. When you compare with the number of visits to each page, it shows which parts of your site are useful.
• Page Views: Shows the number of times a visitor views a specific page. Increased page views simply denote that your site is becoming more engaging.

Category 2: You will now be interested in who these visitors are and what they are doing on your site when they visit. This helps in knowing which site pages or features attract them the most and which ones go unattended. Metrics in this category include:

• Visitor Information: Includes region or country, Web browser in use, and more details about the visitors.
• Registered Users: This shows what each logged-in user did on your site in case your portal requires visitors to log in. This facilitates a more detailed understanding of what diverse visitors are doing on your portal.
• Bounce Rate: This shows the percentage of visits during which a visitor left your portal after looking at just one page. This statistic reflects visit quality. For instance, a high bounce rate for a blog is not a point of worrying because reading one article and leaving the site is sensible. However, for an eCommerce site, it is a point of worry because it indicates that the entrance pages are either non-attractive or irrelevant to the visitors.
• Click Path: This shows how the visitors navigate across your site. Also known as click tracks, these visual representations show the visitors’ journeys. For example, a click path can reveal that 10% of home page visitors prefer clicking the Resources link, while 50% clicks on Current Offers, 25% go on the About Us page, and 20% leave the site.
• Conversion: Tracks the number of people responding to your CTAs (Call to Actions) or doing what you want them to do. For example, it can show the number of users who clicked on a Newsletter link to subscribe to it or on Free Offer on the home page and went ahead to grab it. This metric is somewhat complex as it needs to be set in a tool but is truly a valuable one.
• Top Entry and Exit Pages: Shows the pages through which most visitors tend to enter and leave the site. It is unwise to assume that the home page is always the entry page.
• Site Search: Shows what people search on the site in case the analytic tool supports it. The metric helps you comprehend what visitors want from your site.

Category 3: Next, you would surely like to know from where the visitors are coming to your site. Knowing this information can help in better comprehending the types of sources that move people to your site. Metrics include:

• Organic Traffic Sources: Show the percentage of people who come to your site by clicking its organic listings on the search engine results page. If the percentage is below 40%, it simply means to revamp your content.
• Search Keyword: Shows the words or phrases that the visitors typed in the search box of search engines such as Google to reach to your site. This helps in determining the effectiveness, competitiveness, and success of keywords. It is wise monitoring your keywords for ensuring that you reach out to your target audience.
• Inbound Links: Shows the number of links to your site coming from other sites. Many tools also show which of these links get people to your site. This metric provides an insight as to how effective is your link building strategy and what types of sites consider your content useful. The rule is that the higher the other site’s domain authority, the more valuable is the link.

While the aforementioned metrics should be adequate to get started, many robust analytics tools come with even more sophisticated metrics and analysis features. In fact, many people earn their livelihood by analyzing these statistics, who are typically professionals hired for a profound analysis for big sites.

When considering the diverse analytical tools for your business, the assortment of options can lead to confusion, as you might not know how to use them. This is why it is recommended hiring a professional to dig the virtual space of your site and generate all vital reports.

I just cannot go ahead without stating about a golden rule existing in this regard. It is known as the 90/10 rule, which means if you are spending $100 on analytics for making new decisions for your site, it makes sense to invest $10 on the analytical tools and $90 on analysts with great expertise. Without a proper understanding of the details given by the tools, the reports remain as raw data (no processing), which is of no use for your business.

Bryan Eisenberg, who is the marketing consultant affirms that investing in tools and people who require the former to be successful is the key. However, what matters is the people comprehending that data. According to Avinash Kaushik who is the author of Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, “The quest for a tool that can answer all your questions will ensure that your business will get scrapped and that your career (Web Chief Marketing Officer and Analysts) will be short-lived.” Therefore, he suggested focusing on ‘multiplicity’, the use of multiple tools for different purposes.

In addition, it is worth keeping in mind that neither all tools have the same number of metrics nor do they work in the same way. Because of the high level of complexity involved in the world of analytics due to unique site’s characteristics and visitors’ varying background of preferences, each tool is designed to deal with the metrics in a different way. This is perhaps why Mr. Kaushik focuses on using multiple tools. Using multiple tools simply deepens your level of insight into the site’s success rate as well as a customer base.

Identifying the web actions as those of a ‘unique visitor’ is complex as well as subjective. Therefore, several tools tend to compute these statistics differently. For example, a few tools consider traffic as per a log of the pages on offer by the Web server, while some depends on the reports provided by cookies (information packs sent by the browser of each user). Therefore, while using different tools, it is common to have different values for the same metrics.

For big businesses, tools that are more robust can really be useful, although at a handsome cost, but for small and mid-sized businesses, cheaper and even free tools are available for getting the desired control over the site statistics. Obviously, you will not use all the available tools all the time but employing a few is simply the need of the hour as well as a vital part of your overall web strategy.

Think a Minute

It is now clear no single tool can be the best for analyzing the site. Then, how do you determine the most suitable suite of tools for analytics?

Recall Web Analytics 2.0

According to Mr. Kaushik, Web Analytics 2.0 is defined as the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from the site and competition for driving a constant improvement of the online experience of customers and prospects, translating to your set outcomes (online and offline).

Rather than only a data analysis process, Web analytics 2.0 is an ongoing process of three-tiered data analysis and delivery service for all types of businesses. First is the data itself, as it reveals the clicks, page views, traffic, and more for both the site and direct competition. Second comes what is done with that data, or how you process the gathered information from Web Analytics and apply it to both existing and new customers for ensuring a meaningful and better experience.

The last tier involves how the aforementioned actions are aligned with the most vital business objectives (both online and offline), such as sales, social presence, customer engagements. In short, herein, the data itself facilitates watching how your site is performing.

Based on these tiers, Mr. Kaushik has also come up with an acceptable order of key components of Web Analytics, which are:

1. Clickstream: Measures ‘What’
2. Multiple Outcome Analysis: Measures ‘How Much’
3. Experimentation and Testing: Measures ‘Why’
4. Voice of Customer: Measures ‘Why’ just as the third component
5. Competitive Intelligence: Measures ‘What Else’
6. Insights: Gives ‘Gold!’

Making your site reach the desired performance levels is simply not easy. It takes persistent tracking as well as frequent measurement of diverse metrics for optimizing usage. This is exactly where the concept of Analytics is implemented by using tools belonging to its different component levels. This is how you ‘multiplicity’ is used – employing the most suitable tool at each component stage. Let us now look at the most reliable and efficient Web Analytics tools available per component.

Clickstream Analysis Tools

Clickstream measures data for each page visited, including details such as how the visitor came on that page (keywords, social media support taken, and ads), how long the visitor was on that page or site, and what the visitor did (purchased, subscribed to an offer).

Google Analytics (Free, Ideal for all Businesses)

This one is among the most robust, simpler, and profound analyzers in the market and creates detailed statistics about visitors. You can find out the sources that bring your visitors to your site, their actions on the site, and their frequency of coming back. You can even find their demographics such as geographical location and interests, number of daily visits, number of currently active visitors, and daily revenue generated by the site. Because it is integrated with Adwords that is largest paid search platform online, Internet marketers can ideally monitor the landing page activity and employ the necessary improvements.

For small business owners, it is perhaps the only comprehensive as well as easiest tool to rely upon.

Pros: Ease to set up and use, support for mobile sites, goal tracking, custom data gathering and reports, fast report generation, PDF reports download, quick sharing of dashboard, good help to get started, multiple dashboards support, world-class analytical tools

Cons: No brand-matching customization (limited fonts and layouts), less metrics (widgets) per dashboard, requires constant training, limited goals, Premium version costlier although advanced

Piwik (Free for Hosting on Your Web Server)

Go for this one in case you a technically oriented person and loves adventures. Piwik is an open-source tool executing on MYSQL and PHP. It is perhaps the leading open source tool providing valuable insights into the market campaigns, visitors, and more for optimizing the existing strategy for ensuring the best online experience of your visitors. The tool is designed as an open source alternative to Google Analytics.

For those who do not like sharing all data with Google, Piwik is an ideal substitute.

Pros: Privacy as data on your server is not shared, customizable interface, real time reports, security ensured by blocking URLs and traffic, tracking ability for multiple sites, several data export formats supported, Android and iOS app, no limit on data storage like Google Analytics, all Google Analytics features included, exhaustive help files

Cons: A bit of time-consuming installation process

Woopra (Free For Up to 30,000 Actions per Month after which it is Chargeable (Many Packs)

Woopra is another top-notch tool providing real time tracking of multiple sites for improving customer engagement. It wins over Google Analytics only in terms of update in which the latter takes more time. The desktop tool shows live visitor stats, including location, pages on which they are on, and pages or sections that they have been visited.

I recommend the tool especially for e-commerce site owners who get a chance to chat live with their visitors.

Pros: Well-organized interface, real time viewing, possible customer insights revealed, mobile app supported, notifications for important customer activities, customization of customer data, behavioral profiles for each customer by watching what they did on the website.

Cons: Confusing for beginners due to much data on the dashboard.

You can extend your control and above tools’ power by using Google or Bing Webmaster Tools. These tools help obtaining SEO details and major diagnostic data about your site. It is also recommended using Feedburner for tracking the activity of Clickstream occurring within the RSS feed.

Multiple Outcome Analysis

The outcome analysis is likely to happen within the tools mentioned above and below this section. For instance, you shall be configuring goals and ecommerce tracking in Piwik or Google Analytics. Similarly, campaign’s profit and margin are computable in Microsoft Excel through a relevant database query. Therefore, no specific suggestion of tools for this component.

Experimentation and Testing Tools

These tools aim at improving user experience and increasing the chances for having conversions (leads). At this stage, you should consider conducting different tests such as clickmaps, heatmaps, multivariate (MVT) testing, A/B testing (multiple versions of a site executing simultaneously), geotargeting, and so on. Because there are many tools, I will be covering them briefly.

• Google Website Optimizer (Free): It is a powerful A/B and Multivariate (MVT) testing solution that rotates varying content segments to see which sections get the most clicks. You can choose different page sections for testing such as images and headline.

• Optimizely: It is for those who wish to test very fast, especially A/B testing. It is a new but simply tool offering powerful results for improving the site performance without having any kind of technical knowledge.

• Crazy Egg: This tool employs the Heatmap technology to offer a visual picture of what visitors are doing on pages, where they are moving their mouse, where they are scrolling, and where they click. Such tracking allows observing the most attractive sections of pages and improving the ignored sections for optimizing user interaction. You can also split the data to see how visitors from a single traffic source behaved in comparison with those from other sources.

• MouseFlow: This tool records what the visitors do on your site, right from moving a mouse to filling a text box. It helps in tracking the visitors’ behavior and comfort level through heat maps as well. Mouseflow combines Crazy Egg and UserTesting features.

• UserTesting: This one employs a distinct way to test your site: get real time feedback from visitors in the chosen demographic. You pay for participants chosen to answer your questionnaire regarding your site. A video with the user and her or his activity is recorded and you get the feedback in an hour, stating the user’s actual thoughts. The tool is costly, but worth for real time instant feedback.

Voice of Customer Tools

Clickstream data provides insights into what the visitors did on the site, but it does not say why they left the site without staying there for long. Well, this needs visitor research that can be done by the below described tools.

• Kissinsights (Kissmetrics – Free to Paid): It helps in real-time customer acquisition and retention by revealing information on user habits and engagement before and after they use your It is easy to install and use, as it asks all queries to customers via a simple dashboard for getting customized feedback in the form of short comments. Its data funnel points to the weakest point/step blocking conversions, while the revenue tracking features show what customers do after purchases. In short, you get all data required for increasing conversion rates.

• 4Q (iPerceptions – Free): This is a pure online survey tool allowing you to comprehend the ‘Why’ aspect of visitors. Surveys facilitate gaining vital insights from the customer real experiences. It answers questions such as how satisfied are the customers, what they do at the site, are they doing what they need to do, and so on.

• Qualaroo: This is also a real-time survey tool for getting feedback from the users currently on the site. However, it stands apart because it allows you to use any combination of variables. For example, it helps asking shopping experience when the visitor fills the shopping cart and usage experience while leaving the site. You can get both entry and exit reviews. Consider this tool for sites with a high turnover of visitors and site owners who need to know ‘why’.

• Clicktale (Free to Paid): This one is most prominent in the customer experience analytics, which aims to optimize usability as well as maximize conversion rates. The most useful features are session playback and visitor recordings, which enable watching everything any visitor does on the site. You get to see the recordings of each action of a visitor, right from the first to the last click. The tool also comes with scroll maps, heatmaps, and visual conversion funnels for gaining more useful details about visitors and their habits. However, it is a costly choice.

Competitive Intelligence

Existing since the invent of business, competitive intelligence includes knowing what the competitors are doing, which can be then done better and faster. Such data enable you to recognize what is known and what is unknown as well as analyze ecosystem trends, failures, weaknesses, opportunities, and rising customer preferences. This details help in planning better marketing programs.

• Google Trends & Google Insights (Free): Both tools for search are now merged into a single tool. The Trends tool offers worldwide visitor data for sites deployed anywhere in the world and makes it easy to comprehend traffic and search keywords. The Insights tool simply points out to the global database of customer intentions; you can know what your customers are thinking and feeling. You can use this tool for analyzing industries, emerging trends, share of search, and offline marketing strategies as well.

• Google AdWords Keyword Tool (Free): Consider this tool for refining your SEO strategy as per the most searched keywords, download specific user-typed queries, and gaining insights into specific brands under analysis.

• Facebook Insights (Free): Track the popularity on Facebook by tracking follower counts, post comments, and likes through this tool based on users and interactions. It helps in improving customer engagement on the biggest social media platform.

• Twitalyzer (Free): This one offers detailed dashboard with several metrics for measuring Twitter influence and engagement on your brand identity. You can track your account’s impact on followers, retweet level, and level of conversation engagement. It is easiest one to use for your Twitter account.

• Klout: Consider this one for having the cleanest metrics for measuring performance on Facebook and Twitter.

Conclusion

With Web Analytics tools, the modern responsibility of improvement has been given to us. With so many tools available, it is not difficult to improve your online visibility as well as performance. However, the need is to choose a few of the above tools to collect all the data and process it for taking the right decision. Although Google Analytics is still the most famous tool out there, it is better to use it in combination with other tools to push your site to its maximum potential.

In case of no tight budget and customization as a top priority, it is recommended to select the paid tools that offer all the features and metrics for improving the site’ performance and expand the online customer base.

Creative Tips to Improve Your Blog Writing

If you’ve followed any of the updates from Google over the past year or so, you know all too well that one of the most important things you can do to help your site rank well is to focus on quality content.  High quality content is essentially the lifeblood of every site, and if you don’t have a steady flow of it, your rankings will soon start to suffer.

The problem is, it can become difficult to come up with fresh and interesting ideas to write about week in and week out, especially if you have a fairly narrow niche that you are focused on.  Review the following ten tips to help product creative posts for your blog on a regular basis.

Tip #1 – Top 10 Lists

If you’re reading this, you’ve proven this point already.  People love top X lists, and they make great posts for just about any type of site.  If you’re worried about coming up with ten points to make, remember that it doesn’t always have to be 10.  You can come up with a list of 3, 5, 8, 11, almost any number will work well.

Top 5 and top 10 are fairly standard options, so you might want to start with those.  Some people, however, think that going with an unusual number actually gets more attention.  For example, going with ‘9 Great Tips for X’ may perform better than ’10 Great tips for X.’  To my knowledge, I don’t think anyone has done a case study on this. Give it a try on your website and see what works best for you.

Tip #2 – Publish Studies

People love learning more about topics that they are interested in, and studies are always an attractive read.  The big thing to remember here is that you don’t have to be a Harvard professor to complete a study.  Anytime you are doing your own market testing or research, you’re technically doing your own study.

Using the example from the previous tip, you could test different tops of “top X” lists and see which ones perform best for you.  Once you have gathered all the data, post about the results.  People will appreciate the work you did, and may be able to learn a lot from it.  Just make sure you are honest about how you did the study, and make sure it is relevant to your target audience.

Tip #3 – Write like You Talk

One of the hardest things for many writers to do is start breaking some of the grammar rules that they’ve worked so hard to learn.  While grammar is certainly essential in most cases, you can also cut loose every once in a while and write a more causal post that sounds much more conversational.

Using common phrases like, “You’ve gotta hear about what happened next.” Or, “keep reading, you’re gonna love it.” Can help to spice up your page.  Some people will say that search engines only want perfect grammar, but there is really no evidence to support this.  Search engines want engaging content that readers benefit from, and in many cases, a casual article is just the thing.  There have been some important studies and other research that has gone into this, and writing in a more casual way is definitely a good idea, at least some of the time.

Tip #4 – Follow the News

For most niches, one of the best ways to come up with new things to write about is to follow the news.  You can sign up for alerts whenever a new story is published about your niche, and then write a post about it.  Whether it is something simple like a new CEO for a company in your niche, or it is something slightly off-topic like a celebrity being seen with your product.  News stories are always a great addition to any site.

Tip #5 – Shake up the Length

One of the most commonly cited blog writing tips around is that good blogs should be 500-1000 words long.  There are all types of reasons given for this ranging from this is the ideal length for holding the reader’s attention to people thinking that it is best for SEO.  The reality is, however, that the length of your post really doesn’t matter.

Your focus should be on providing the best possible post that you can.  Sometimes that will take 200 words, sometimes it will take 2000.  You should never concern yourself with word count, but just make sure you get all the necessary information into each post no matter how long it takes.

Tip #6 – Get Off-Topic

Another major mistake site owners make is always having every single article they post on one specific topic.  If you have a site about cookie recipes with caramel in them, for example, you may be tempted to only write about this very narrow concept.

While you certainly do want to focus on this more than anything else, it doesn’t hurt to talk about loosely related things as well.  For example, you could post about an amazing brownie you had at a party, or post about how caramel is made.  As long as the topics are in some way related to your main niche, people will appreciate the change of tune every once in a while.

Tip #7 – Do Keyword Research (But Ignore the Numbers)

If you’re looking for a really great way to quickly come up with dozens of good ideas to write about, start doing some keyword research.  While typically thought of as an SEO strategy, keyword research tools are great way to quickly generate lots of ideas.  It doesn’t really matter if the keyword is popular or not, your goal should be to write a quality post that your readers will enjoy.  The SEO research isn’t about numbers, it is about ideas!

Tip #8 – Interviews Rock!

If you’re really stuck on an idea, consider reaching out to others for help.  The best way to do this is to ask others in the industry, or in a related industry, if they would be willing to do an interview for you. Written interviews are typically easy to perform, and many people will be happy to complete them in exchange for little more than the free publicity they will get.

Come up with a few dozen questions that you can ask people, and choose the best ones for each interviewee.  There are many resources out there to help you come up with the right questions so you can really interview like a professional.  When ready, send out interview requests to everyone you can think of that is in your niche, in a related niche, or uses products from your niche. As people begin to respond, you’ll find that you have a good supply of ready-made posts for your site!

Bonus Tip: QUALITY QUALITY QUALITY!

To wrap this up, let me just reiterate the fact that no matter which of these tips you use, the most important thing is that you do it with quality in mind.  Quality doesn’t always mean perfect spelling and grammar (though that is typically a part of it).  Quality means only posting things that people will actually want to read.  This is how you will build your audience over time, and more importantly, build a solid relationship with that audience, which is really the true point of any website.

If you are still having trouble coming up with great ideas for your blog, consider contacting us for help.  We have seasoned writers on staff who would be happy to create custom content specifically for you.  This content will be interesting, engaging and optimized so the search engines will love it.  We will work with you to determine the type of content, and what type of goals you want it to accomplish.  Your satisfaction is guaranteed.

Driving Organic Traffic and Increasing Conversions

“The longer you make the mouse wait for the cheese, the lesser are the chances of it camping at your den. It has been running around all day searching for nourishment’s and if you just give it some food with ease, it is going to come back tomorrow and maybe tell others about your generosity as well.”

This same law applies to humans as well. Humans have had an unending quest for knowledge from the beginning of civilization and it is in our nature to reach out and find shelter at those places which make sustenance simple. With that being said, the ideal organic traffic driving strategies would normally incorporate elements like – Value, Keyword Research, Earning Backlinks and Niche Hotness Quotient!

Let’s take an example of a ‘model persona’ of your business. Say you are a Cosmetic Firm and I am a person suffering from proactive hair fall due to bad products that I used in the past. I need to save myself from the horror of pattern baldness and how would you help me?

From my perspective –

“I may just be another potential customer for your business who has approached your website to seek information. I am standing just behind the fence, asking to be convinced, looking for solutions to my problems, trying to find examples of your past expertise.

The sooner you are able to give me the information (cheese), that I am here for – the more valuable your website is going to be for me. If you beat around the bush and make me work the last brain cell, I am going to get frustrated soon and scurry off to another website that clearly expresses the solutions to my awful problem.

There are a few things to consider here, since the situation is completely hypothetical:

How did I reach your website in the first place?

 

1. You did proper keyword research around your business which deals in organic cosmetics that are helpful for skin and hair. So when I entered the phrase “hair fall treatment” in Google, I was able to find a direct link to your domain as a page on your website is ranking for the word “hair fall treatment.”

OR

2. I got your reference from a friend or an acquaintance in Social Media who had endless praises for the effectiveness of your products. Still to be extra sure, I dropped by to check the value in your website.

OR

3. I came across an offline or online very captivating advertisement of your brand that had a strong message for people to avoid chemical cosmetics and their harmful effects. Since, the campaign was somewhere related to my sentiments; I instantly connected to your brand and thought it would be wise to check your website.

OR

4. I was reading an interesting blog post around my problems and all of a sudden, there was a link (backlink) suggesting your website for organic hair and skin care treatments.

OR

5. There are many other possibilities and I don’t want this post to become a “Definitive Guide on How I Reached Your Website 101.” So you get my idea right?

NOW, I am already at your website – “I am standing behind the fence. A bit dicey about your products, since I have been overly exploited by – Get Your Hair Back in a Week Schemes. How do I convince myself or how do you convince me that I won’t be cheated again?

By delivering valuable content of course.

Let’s take a look at the key ingredients of a valuable content:

1. Content that you think will be worth my time. (Remember I am representing a ‘Model Persona’ of your business). Keyword research is important, but content that is filled with keywords only to rank your website is not going to drive any conversions for your business.

Remember, driving organic traffic is not about driving 1 Million people to your business, but it is about driving quality traffic to your website and converting them into followers of your brand ideology.

2. Content that you think will be worth putting up on your website. There is no point in writing a crystal clear and precise copy for Vacuum Cleaners on a cosmetic website, is there? So, make every piece of content that you post on your website, shine around your niche. Don’t just write for your company, write for your ‘category’ and write around customer problems and give them information that they should feel like bookmarking, or sharing with others.

There is no magic trick to this. It requires a lot of research and understanding of the potential requirements of your customers and delivering it to them.

 

3. Update or post fresh content on regular intervals. I come across with many bloggers in the IM-world who whine about less traffic in their blogs in spite of writing valuable content. But I know from the instant that there is something terribly wrong in their approach and they are not able to fix all the pieces in the puzzle, thus missing out on organic traffic.

After digging in, I find that the last time they posted on their blog was 2 weeks ago and the last time they updated any of their previous articles was ‘NEVER.’

 

This is not rocket science or any voodoo magic we are doing here. There are millions of bloggers who are ten times more hardworking and committed than you. If you want that piece of the pie, you gotta work for it, or hire people to do it for you. But you cannot avoid it.

4. People want fresh content, give it to them. It is always a good idea to revive your old content from time to time and give it a new look and publish it on your blog. But it is always better to give your audience fresh content that is unique or a latest trend in the news around your niche. Mostly all newspapers will have a separate column for your niche – Keep a watch for anything interesting and valuable and share your message around the same topic in your website or blog.

I see a lot of people just picking up and re-styling content from other websites. The only one time I will consider that stuff valuable is if I see that you have taken the pain to dig in deeper and compile a lot of solutions from various sources. That works a charm at times, but I still recommend writing unique and new content. This makes the content all the more valuable.

5. Include case studies, examples, past accomplishments where ever possible. But do not, cover the cheese and hard coat it with your medals. I was reading a very popular blog recently and they had done a case study on some of the most visited blog posts in leading blogs of 2014.

It was clear from the case study itself that, out of the 5 blogs they surveyed, all of them had an average of Three Top Posts that received organic traffic even after 7 months of publishing. And as you guessed it right – These three blogs had unique case studies on the A/B testing, Problem Solutions, Results of their Past Campaigns etc. You get the idea right?

I cannot stress the importance of including a case study enough. All I can say is adding a legitimate and real life case study to your website is going to triple its value from the buyer’s perspective. And websites that offer their past case studies to their audience have 26% higher chances of converting than websites without it.

 

SO, do not waste my time with publicity, fluff and big-fancy words that ooze of excellent copywriting skills – JUST GIVE ME THE CHESSE!

SHOW ME CLEARLY HOW I AS A CUSTOMER WILL BENEFIT FROM YOUR BRAND OR SERVICE BY ACCEPTING YOUR OFFER. GIVE ME A GOOD REASON TO SAY YES!

Somewhere in our subconscious mind, we all know the key to driving organic traffic but we suffer from some problems too many. If you ever come across people like the ones I mention below, tell them to take action or delete the word organic traffic or conversion from their dictionaries.

1. Paralysis by analysis – “I am the kind of person who spends too much time on the internet trying to reach perfection, but when it comes to taking actions I am just too confused because I read too much I think.”

2. Virtue in Ignorance – “I know it all – Keyword Research, Valuable Content (mindless content jargon). I am just too lazy to move my !%$ and I would just continue doing whatever I am.

DRUM ROLL Please for this fantastic creature. He knows what to do, but would choose to ignore everything. Can anyone remind me why we are here again?

3. Clueless Homosapien – “I have no clue what I am doing and I just lack the necessary knowhow, can someone please guide me?”

Ask these people to look up Google for their solutions. Google probably has answers to everything, unless you are not looking for How to make an Atom Bomb (or something closely related to the destruction of the world), of course. Maybe, they have it and they just don’t share it for everyone’s welfare. Who knows?

4. My hands are tied – “I have read all about driving organic traffic and writing valuable content that gets shared but I seem to have a hole in my pocket or my brain.”

There are lots of people who either lack the necessary knowhow or do not have the funds that go into research and development to create the ideal atmosphere for driving organic traffic. All I have to say is, hard luck surviving the Internet to these people. There is no point in being a part of this rat race if you do not have even one of these key characteristics.

Everyone keeps saying do this and do that but in the end it is all too confusing. If you were a newbie, my suggestion would be to take parts of my advice and act on it, instead of trying to enact the whole thing at once. If you are a seasoned pro, you are already spinning the money and maybe you could just brush up your skills through this post. Do remember to share your views in the end or spread it to people who may need this small piece of motivation.

With everything said and done, the only reason that keeps you reading this ruthless jargon on proactive organic reach and how to become a Google guru is engaging content and the only way this content reaches you or you reach the content is ‘virality.’

Moving on, let us keep aside everything I mentioned until now and concentrate on – “HOW TO REACH THE TRAFFIC THAT’S LOOKING FOR MY BUSINESS?”

Apart from the value your content provides (which I am assuming it does), there are three more ‘elements,’ to your content that need to be asynchronous in order to drive more traffic to your online delegation:

1. Proper Keyword Research – I will go into this in a while.
2. Lots of Backlinks – These are the best and ratio-wise the most converting ways of reaching out to the people who are looking for you. The more blogs and websites and users on the internet that are talking about your business. The more you are disposed to reaching your business milestones and converting visitors who reach your website.
3. Hotness quotient! – The hotness quotient of your niche or category of your business (whichever way you say it) plays an important role in the amount of organic traffic that comes to your business.

For example: If your business revolves around skin care and beauty treatments – This is an evergreen niche and you can expect to receive huge amounts of organic traffic all throughout the year.

BUT

If your business is based on seasonal deals then you may not get as much traffic as you would get during or before a holiday season.

You get the point right? Read on and I will clear any doubts you have about this. And I alone do ‘not vouch for this – you can check out various other sources on the internet and experts who have the same opinion as I do. For example – Hubspot.com, QuickSprout.com, Inc.com and SocialTriggers.com

Now, getting back to square one – Let’s take a look at how to analyze your content strategy and tweak it to create valuable content that kills your competitors –

Like I mentioned before, I will repeat myself sorry – Valuable Content will get more likes, the more people who like your content, the more they will share it. The more shares your content will get, the more references on the Internet will vouch for your products or services and All this compiled together will create an IMBALANCED BACKLINK WHEEL – that should have your competitors regret your existence.

If you read a lot of Internet Marketing blogs, you must have already come across the saying “You are crazy if your business don’t own a blog space to your website!” In addition, I will second this opinion. How do you aim to drive traffic to your website with only static pages and no dynamic content?

This is my way of planning a content strategy for my blog. (Shameless Self Promotion Here)

1. DOING THE KEYWORD RESEARCH – According to statistics, reaching the first page on Google does make businesses successful, but you will be surprised to know that actually the first link in the SERPs is able to steal more than 49% of the search traffic and the rest 9 links get only a single digit percent of the remaining traffic. Needless to say that even a small percentage of Global Traffic is actually a huge amount of the cake that you could keep on your plate.

This is only possible through extensive keyword research. I will not tell you how to conduct an in-depth keyword research here but you could always take help from the experts in the Engage community.

Keyword research forms the basic framework of any online establishment. The sooner you understand the importance of this the better it will be for your business.

What really makes it such a critical aspect to consider is that both Search Engines and Users depend on it.

Choosing the right keywords is an art and once you have your website optimized for a particular keyword. You can be sure to reach out to that audience who is searching for “your keywords” in the search engines. This will enable your brand to be present at the right place and the right time, which is the essence of driving organic traffic to your website.

2. WRITING CONTENT FOR THE LONG TERM STRATEGY – Instead of trying to write content that will rank for probably a day or two – try to focus your mind and effort on content that is going to be hot, forever and ever.

This is what I meant by Hotness Quotient of your niche.  By writing content that will only be searched for periodically, you will limit yourself to visitors only at those times of the year when there is a demand for it.

There will also be a chance of not ranking for it at all, as the more active blogs and websites which are already ranking high and giving HOT Content to the readers will cover that topic at the right time.

Anything that is Evergreen and may never get old, in terms of SEO and Value to the reader is known as evergreen content.

For example – If you make a website around an event that will be hosted in 2014. You may be receiving stable traffic this year, but unless and until there is a follow up of that event the next year, you can very well except zero to negligible traffic. You cannot expect people to vouch for or like content that is old. Can you? 

BUT 

If you had a website covering symptoms of Pregnancy, Precautions, Medications, Accessories, Diets etc (basically everything around the niche – It is an evergreen niche and traffic source for such niches will never die at any time of the year.

Let’s take a look at some more examples of Evergreen Niches:

• Relationships and Depression
• Love
• Parenting
• Pet Care
• Finance
• Etc..

AND

Look at these examples of Niches that are not evergreen:

• Articles relating to current fashion trends
• Current Pop Culture
• News Articles
• Etc..

3. SHARING YOUR CONTENT AND EARNING BACKLINKS – If you are aware of the prevalent SEO practices, you will already know that manual link building is a gradually dying trend. Not only is it painstakingly complicated and time consuming, but it is also losing its luster as content strategies become more progressive.

 

IF YOU HAVE DONE THE KEYWORD RESREACHING AND WRITTEN A VALUABLE PIECE OF CONTENT, GENERATING BACKLINKS FOR IT IS NOT GOING TO BE MUCH OF A PROBLEM. JUST FOLLOW MY LEAD here,

 

• Power of SOCIAL MEDIA – If you have a good social media presence, you can always share your content with your fans and following and they in return will share and like your content, if there is value in it for them. Some might even share your posts with others out of sheer goodwill. That’s how easy it is to get backlinks pointing to your website, if you have a compact community of your own.
• Clean Website Interface – Your website interface plays a crucial role in deterring or encouraging people to share the content that you have published. According to statistics (just take my word for it), majority of the content that goes viral on social media is from websites that offer clean and clutter free interface.

 

If you offer an enhanced user experience at your website, a visitor will more likely feel comfortable in sharing your ‘helpful’ and ‘valuable’ content with others.NOT only this, but it also has a very positive impact in diminishing the bounce rate of your website. Lesser the bounce rate, higher the chances of traffic converting into your brand followers or users.

 

---

FINAL WORDS

To sum it up, the key to driving organic traffic is Valuable Content, powered by effective keyword research, social sharing and earning backlinks along with writing on topics around your niche or category that is evergreen and  always looked for.Don’t forget to share your views below and if you liked this read, then go ahead and click the Social Media Buttons Below – they do magic. 😉