When I first approach a new client about their online needs, one of the first questions I always ask is, "Are you getting a lot of new customers out of your existing website?" The answer I usually receive ranges from "Not a lot " through to "Customers? What customers?"

But when I follow this up with "How do you measure your online traffic?" the answer to this is nearly always the same - "I don’t know."

80% of all businesses we meet with receive no regular statistics about their website at all. Of the remaining 20%, half check their statistics every couple of months.

Can you imagine not paying attention to the returns of your investment in any other form of advertising? If you advertise in the local paper, or rent out a billboard on  the Westgate Freeway, you would want to see that outlay met with a serious influx of customers.

The reason businesses may not tend to be as diligent when it comes to tracking their website leads is that a website is built with an estimated lifespan of 2-3 years. Once the initial expense has been incurred, we may pay attention to the site for the first few months, but by year 2 our interest could very easily have waned.

So how do you find out if your website is really pulling its weight, and how can you fix it if it’s not?

1. Access your site’s free statistics today. Hell, do it now! And then do it at least once a month. If you don’t know how, call your hosting company and have them explain it to you. For Stockstreet Hosting customers, go to www.yourdomain.com.au/cpanel and enter your user name and password, then click on "Web/FTP stats". Webalizer is the best choice for stats.
2. Ask your customers. This may sound a bit obvious, but do you or your reception ask every new customer how they heard about your business? This can also be a good time to get feedback about the site, so that the next time it comes for a revamp, you’ll be one step ahead of your competition.
3. Use your site to measure other advertising. The first week you launch that new radio or magazine campaign, pay as much attention to your web statistics as you do to answering the telephone. Also, is your website advertised on every surface available to your business including your invoices? Remember, a website address is ten times easier to remember than a phone number.
4. Run a special online. Let’ face it, all the traffic in the world won’t make you a millionaire if the look and layout of your website can’t close the deal. But a big discount offered to "web customers only" has been known to make the average customer a lot more forgiving.

   And if these four don’t paint a very rosy picture, then…

5. Get your site optimised. If your site did not receive Search Engine Optimisation at the time of construction, your site has missed out on probably the most critical aspect of online marketing - allowing customers to find you via the major search engines. There are varying degrees of Search Engine Optimisation, the most important being site-specific measures. All Stockstreet website clients would have received this service at the time of construction (unlike many of the sites built by our competitors), while maintenance clients can apply to have this service applied to existing sites by contacting Stockstreet.

Many of you may have received emails from companies that appear as mini-websites, what we call HTML newsletters, or e-newsletters.

E-newsletters are by far the cheapest, easiest method to promote repeat business with your existing customer base or even future customers. Whether it be specials, promotions, new products and services or existing products and services, e-newsletters are a great way of keeping your business fresh in the minds of customers. Consider this:

My brother occasionally calls on me to help him with the purchasing of PC Computers for his business. The last time I helped him with this, about a year ago, I used a Victorian company whose website was very easy to use and had the customer service to back it up. Every month since then, I have received an e-newsletter from them outlining their latest specials that I might have browsed through quickly and then deleted. Then last month, my brother calls again with a need for more PC’s. Who do you think was the first port of call? In the cut-throat, low-margin area of computer sales, this is a pretty handy-advantage for this PC company to have.

What was the cost to that PC company? Virtually zero. Were they the best deal on offer? Maybe. But the relationship I have with this company that could have very easily been the length of the first transaction (i.e. a couple of days) now stretches over a number of years. So my opinion of them is likely to remain pretty high.

E-newsletters can be a weekly, monthly, bi-monthly or even annual proposition to your business and consistently return customers to your website or your front door again and again.

It’s that time of year again when Sensis comes a knocking with a new batch of products to gobble up your advertising dollar. Now that Sensis runs Sensis.com, Yellow Pages Online, White Pages Online, Trading Post Online AND all their print alternatives, there’s a lot of things to consider.

This month, we’ll look at Yellow Pages Online (YPOL) at www.yellowpages.com.au. Last year, the site had a major makeover and is now easier to use and easier to narrow searches down to particular products, services and areas.

Many of you may already be paying for priority listings on the YPOL site, which is a good idea that Stockstreet recommends to all clients. At a fraction of the cost of the corresponding print ads, it represents good value. But once page 1 of your classification is filled with paid priority listings, what do you do then?

Sensis has now introduced keywords that affect listings on the YPOL site. Just like keywords are a focus of your own website, you can now nominate keywords that affect the placement of your ad at the Yellow Pages website. This means not only getting more customers that you do want, but also filtering out the ones you don’t.

Another feature that has been around for a year is the concept of "Platinum Tiles." Each classification at YPOL now has three banner ads that appear above the priority listings. Advertisers pay a premium to maintain these banner ads and, needless to say, these tiles generate a lot of leads for these advertisers although relevance can be an issue i.e. are the leads the kind of customer you are looking for.

The bad news is that if the three spots are all taken by your competitors, you’ll have to wait for one of them to drop it before you can jump in.

If you haven’t spoke to your Sensis sales rep yet this year, take the initiative and call them to give you more information on the above. It could be worth a lot of extra online business!