There was a time, quite a few years ago, when every website you visited had a visitor counter on it. Sometimes the counter showed only a few visitors, sometimes it showed millions of visitors. Aside from the fact that these numbers could easily be faked, the best sites were considered to be the ones with the highest numbers.
As far as the site owners were concerned (assuming the numbers were real) all they needed was a large number of visitors to be successful. As long as those visitors reached the site, they would be happy.
If the site was selling a selection of products, it was likely that 1% of visitors would turn into buyers – so one million visitors virtually guaranteed ten thousand sales. It was an economy of scale, and the business was only interested in input vs output. Nobody was bothered about the action or behavior of 99% of the leaving visitors or for that matter 1% of the buyers- what they were doing on the website, what links they are clicking, why and where they are bouncing off.
But today, businesses can not afford to leave the visitors like that. Necessity became the mother of invention and strong website tracking technology came into the picture. And with every smart marketing team leveraging the power of website visitor tracking, it is optional no more.
What is website visitor tracking?
Website visitor tracking is a process of recording your web visitor’s actions, behavior, and motivation, which helps you to serve them better and move them further down the sales funnel.
What are the advantages of website visitor tracking?
With the website being one of the most important lead-gen tools, it is important to not only discover how people reach your site but also to see how they travel through it. Understand their area of interest and reason for drop off give valuable insight to marketers to engage them further and tighten their website structure. Below are the top reasons why you should be considering to track website visitors if you are not doing it already
Conversion centric website
Knowing what doesn’t work with your visitors is as important as knowing what does work, and only when you know the bounce off points on your website, you can patch them seamlessly with the relevant content and offers, which is directly proportional to website’s conversion rate.
Who doesn’t want a website where every query has been answered, every roadblock removed, and every phrase designed to reach them in the manner that is most likely to convert?
Context to the sales team
Tracking a visitor’s behavior provides valuable insights into sales conversations. Knowing that an individual has visited the pricing page for a particular product will give the salesperson an advantage in any negotiations that follow on from this, as the salesperson will be fully aware that the lead has a distinct interest in the product and has some interest or concerns about the pricing.
This kind of tracking also gives an opportunity to the salesperson to prepare for the call/meeting beforehand.
Identifying the hot leads
If you can track the website visitors, you can score them as well. You can give a high score to the important activities like filling up a form, reading content for a longer duration and browsing multiple pages and negative score to actions like unsubscribing.
The cumulative score of all the activities for the lead is the reflection of the seriousness of their interest. This lead score helps the sales team to prioritize their follow-ups and chase the hottest leads first
Automate responses
You can set up automatic messages or autoresponders against particular web events. For example, if someone clicks on a schedule appointment button but abandons the form, you can nudge him to fill out the form via notifications and emails.
This lies in the territory of marketing automation, but never the less website visitor tracking forms the base for such kind of interaction
Traffic & Revenue Attribution
You may be running several paid-for marketing campaigns, perhaps using Facebook and Google adverts. From the overall tracking figures, you may determine that 75% of your traffic comes from Facebook, 5% from Google ads, and the other 20% through organic search terms. This would be a good indicator that you either need to turn off, or at the very least revise, your Google adverts.
By tracking the progress of these visitors, you may find that even though Google ads provide 5% of your visitors, they account for 99% of your sales – and that’s a strong indicator to turn off the Facebook ads instead!
Each business will have a different set of statistics, and it is important to understand them so you know where to spend your money to have the greatest effect.
The ideal tracking process runs like this:
The visitor arrives at the website (with their source noted) and fills in a form with their details. They continue to the products page and the tracking system notes which products they are interested in. An automatic email is sent to the visitor with details about these products.
Later, the visitor reviews their email and clicks on a link in the automatic message that they received. This takes them to the pricing page for the product they have expressed an interest in.
They ponder the page for a few minutes, and either make a purchase or leave.
If they make the purchase, all is well and good. If they leave, a salesperson will receive notification due to the amount of time they spent looking at the prices.
The salesperson will then follow up the lead and work through a standard sales process to close the deal.
Throughout your website, there will be different forms, different products, and even different page layouts. The text on buttons may even be different – which is more likely to convert? “Buy Now”, “More Info”, “Get Prices”, or something else?
By tracking each visitor, you’ll be able to build a picture of which forms convert well, which page layout is preferred, and which button-text or call to action gets the best results. Don’t trust that the one that appeals to you is the one that appeals to everyone else – you are on the inside looking out, while all your visitors are from the outside, looking in.
Do I need website visitor tracking?
Every business that has a website and uses it to get sales can benefit from finding out everything they can about their visitors. Knowing your traffic sources along with which products are the most viewed can be a fascinating revelation about the ways in which the minds of your potential customers work.
With LeadSquared, every event that is tracked on your website can be custom defined, right down to any information documents that are downloaded, any videos that are viewed, to the length of time they spend in a particular section of the site.
Any time your visitor visits a page about a particular product, you can automatically send them information about that product or related products and keep them informed of any changes or updates that affect that product.
While these may only seem like small things, putting them all together allows you to build an effective marketing campaign for all of your products while being aware of what sells, how it sells, and who it sells to – invaluable information in any market.
