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25 August 2009, 14:31
Read Your Customers' Minds by Christine Churchill
Christine Churchill is the President of KeyRelevance.com, a full service Dallas search engine marketing company that specializes in helping businesses succeed online. Christine and her experienced team of online marketers provide a holistic approach to marketing: increasing a site's visibility online, improving the user experience on the site, and maximizing the site's conversion potential.
Using Site Search to Read Your Customers' Minds
Understanding the "why" of visitor behavior is one of the most frustrating aspects of online marketing. Fortunately, you have a potentially untapped tool that will allow you to get inside the heads of your site visitors and determine what they are looking for, what they expect to find on your site, and whether you are serving those needs.
You can do this by putting a site search box on your website and tracking the queries made and what visitors do with the results. When the customer enters words into a search box on your site, she is telling you in exact words for what it is she is searching. It is hard to find a better source of keyword information. Not only do you confirm the keywords the customer uses to search for your products, but you may also learn terms that customers equate with your business. These might be ideas for future products you could offer or new ways to describe existing products.
The site search function also provides users another option for navigating your site. For many people, using a search function is their preferred method for navigation.
What is Site Search?
Site search a tool that allows a visitor to search within the contents of a site for specific topics. If I am visiting your site that sells digital cameras, I might enter the model number into the search box or, if I've not yet settled on a specific model, I might type in characteristics of the camera I want. The site search tool would then deliver up pages from your site that are relevant to the keywords searched.
What if you don't have a site search tool?
The good news is you don't have to build a site search application. There are a number of free, open source site search tools in a variety of languages. There are plugins for popular site publishing tools. Many blogs come with site search built into the theme. There are also fee-based third party site search tools that allow for extensive customization.
One simple cheap site search option is Google Site Search (www.google.com/sitesearch/). Google offers up a free version (if you run Google ads) or a paid version (without ads), so don't let cost keep you from getting a site function on your site.
How to leverage your site's search box to read minds
Whichever site search tool you chose, be sure that you have a way of capturing the searched keywords so you can review them easily. The easiest way to accomplish this is to integrate the search results into your analytics. If the site search keywords are part of your analytics information, you are much more likely to review the material than if you just archived them on your server and forgot them.
Insights from searched terms
Once you have your site search integrated into your analytics, you can use your analytics to capture search queries and analyze reports. Here are a few insights you might glean:
* Understand what people expect from the site.
* Get ideas for new article topics or product areas for expansion.
* Identify navigation problems.
* Find missed opportunities that cause people to leave the site.
Setting up Site Search tracking in Google Analytics
Most analytics packages make integration easy. For example, with Google Analytics, there is a simple two step process: enable site search and tell Google how to capture the search info.
There are detailed instructions online, but essentially you set up the site search solution of your choice, then edit your Google Analytics profile to enable site search and enter the query parameter into the appropriate box. Once set up, you can then log on to your Google Analytics account and look under the Content section of the Left Nav for Site Search. It has never been so easy to get keyword data direct from the consumer.
What do I do with this info now that it's set up?
Google Analytics provides several reports to help you interpret Google site search data. The following reports help the webmaster better understand the visitor's behavior:
Search Term. These are the actual search terms visitors are using on your site. Mine this information for new article topics, product ideas, navigation issues , etc.
Total Unique Searches tells you how popular is that particular phrase. Note that this is a popularity count for that exact search phrase, so consider using the filter tool to look for larger themes across multiple queries.
Results Pageviews/Search. From the results returned, how many different pages were viewed? A large number here may mean that results that at first blush appeared relevant, did not answer the visitor's question, or that there are many relevant pages on the site and the visitor viewed several. The Time After Search metric (see below) will help to determine which is the case.
% Search Exits. How many folks exited the site after looking at the search results page (as the last page viewed)? A large number here indicates that the site missed the mark on returning relevant results. Popular searches with a large search exit percentage is a prime indicator for the need to develop new content.
% Search Refinements. What percentage of searchers conducted another search after searching this term? Again, this may represent a missed opportunity and indicate the need to develop more content.
Time After Search. How long did a visitor remain on the site after searching? Longer engagements indicate that the site is capturing the visitor's interest -- generally a good sign for a site.
Search Depth. How many pages of search results did visitors review? If you have a large or complex site, many pages of search results might be returned for a given query.
The quest to better understand your target audience begins with keywords. Using site search and tying it into your analytics package allows the webmaster to see the exact terms the searcher uses to look for items on the site. This unique insight into the mind of the visitor will enable you to better understand visitor behavior and improve the user experience.
Enjoy!
Margarita Nomeikiene
Content
24 August 2009, 20:09
Live deeper from Brian Vaszily
If You Run a Business Definitely Check This Out
This is a very special email invitation for those IntenseExperiences. com readers who run their own business, however large or small ... or who have ever thought of doing so.
On Wednesday, August 5, I am going to be listening in on an important by-invitation-only call led by two of today's most well-known and respected entrepreneurial branding experts. In recent years they have become friends of mine, and I can assure you their insights and expertise can make a huge difference in your business' success, just as they've done for hundreds of others. Bottom line is that every time they give one of these tele-seminars, I gain so many amazing insights that I wouldn't miss it for (almost) anything.
And here's the great news: this time, I've arranged for you to attend this call too, at no-cost-whatsoever to you!
In this call you will discover how, as a small business entrepreneur, you can approach your business just like the "big guys" and develop a reliable customer base quickly. You'll discover how you can apply these strategies immediately and without spending a cent.
My friends Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone, award-winning co-creators of BrandU, with nearly twenty years of working with Fortune 500 companies as well as hundreds of start-ups, will share top strategies that you can copy from the big brands on an illuminating not-to-be-missed call on August 5th.
If you run your own business or have thought of doing so, you really don't want to miss this ... especially because it's free.
But there are only limited lines for the call, so head here for more details and to register.
Known for their entertaining insights and practical how-to-steps, Kim and Vito, with help of their special guests, will share with you:
The first thing to do to develop your brand... What you have to do to stop selling your business short... How to make people think of you first... How to create desire and keep people buying from you... The reliable way to recapture what you've lost over the last several months...
There are many things competing for your attention these days, but on this no-cost-call, you will honestly walk away with so much valuable knowledge that Kim & Vito so graciously share ... knowledge that you can apply to your business immediately.
In fact, listen closely on the call and you'll get the chance to work with Kim & Vito, privately, at no-cost.
Reserve your space today.
http://www.brandu.com/Public/PP/7BrandSecrets/index.cfm?PID=7brandaffiliate&af=18315
Enjoy!
Margarita Nomeikiene
Content
22 August 2009, 16:11
A Year of Rumi. Kingdom of Joy Lesson 1 by Andrew Harvey
A Year of Rumi
by Andrew Harvey
Lesson 1: Kingdom of Joy
When the great Sufi mystic and poet Jalal-ud-Din Rumi died at sunset in Konya, southern Turkey, on December 17, 1273, he had lived for almost half his sixty-six years in the Sun of the Awakened Heart. With the light of its splendor as his constant inspiration, Rumi composed 3,500 odes, 2,000 quatrains, and a vast spiritual epic called the Mathnawai, and founded the Mevlevi Order that, under his son Sultan Walad and his successors, was to spread his vision throughout t the Islamic world, from the most remote villages of Turkey and Iran to Jakarta, from Tangiers to Sarajevo. Now, over 700 years later, through the pioneering (and superb) translations of Coleman Barks, Robert Bly, Jonathon Star, and others, Rumi is almost as well know and revered in the West as he has long been in the East.
Not long before his death, Rumi wrote of his passion for his Beloved, Shams-I-Tabriz, and its significance:
Those tender words we said to one another
Are stored in the secret heart of heaven.
One day, like the rain, they will fall and spread
And their mystery will grow green over the world.
The time has come for this greening of the worlds heart and mind by the mystery of Rumi's love for his Beloved. Increasingly, Rumi is being recognized as the unique spiritual genius he is, as someone who is fused at the highest level and with the greatest possible intensity the intellect of a Plato, the vision, passion and soul-force of a Christ or Buddha, and the extraordinary literary gifts of a Shakespeare. Rumi is, I believe, not only the world's greatest mystical poet but also an essential guide to the new planetary spiritual renaissance that is slowly emerging from the ruins of our civilization. He speaks to us from the depths of our won sacred identity, and what he says has the electric eloquence of our innermost truth. No other poet or philosopher of whom I know has Rumi's almost frightening intimacy of address, and no one I am aware of in any civilization has conveyed the terror, rapture and wonder of awakening to Divine Love with such fearless and gorgeous courage, such humility and such unflinching clarity.
The world is in terrible danger. We have very little time left in which to make desperately needed changes in every arena of life. We need the truth and empowerment of authentic mystical understanding and love now more than at any other moment of our history. May the Light of the Heart be revealed in all to all of us, and may we all, united in and by Divine Love, transform together the conditions of life on earth.
- Andrew Harvey
Every day for the next year, you will receive an email that will contain one of Rumi's wonderful poems. Today, we begin our journey together with the following:
If you are seeking, seek us with joy
For we live in the kingdom of joy.
Do not give your heart to anything else
But to the love of those who are clear joy,
Do not stray into the neighborhood of despair.
For there are hopes: they are real, they exist
Do not go in the direction of darkness
I tell you: suns exist.
- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi
(Translated by Andrew Harvey from A Year of Rumi)
Enjoy!
from DailyOM Margarita Nomeikiene
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