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Business analytics

Measuring success with business analytics

Business analytics

Measure the success of your website with business analytics. 

The secret to a successful website is by knowing how to effectively collect and utilise the right information in a way that makes key business decisions clear and obvious.

Unlike any other marketing, the success of your website is completely and naturally trackable. Not only is every page and image access recorded in a log file, but you can even add tags to the pages on your website for special web analytics servers to monitor the visitors on your website. Web statistics reporting tools can access this information and represent the data to highlight visitor patterns and behaviours. 

In order to make sense of this information, you need to determine what information is fundamental to the key decisions you need to make. Once you know what you’re looking for, you then need to determine how you are going to look after and nurture this information in order that the right decisions can be made.

Web stats

How to track your KPIs

Your KPIs will be a set of measurements you take on a regular basis in order to track the performance over time. 

This data can be used to make performance predictions for changes in any of the measured data. Standard performance indicators are: 

  • Daily, weekly, monthly visitors 
  • Daily, weekly, monthly page views 
  • Most requested pages
Measuring Success

How to determine what information is important.

The information is only important if it is relevant to the purpose of your website. 

If you know your purpose, then you need to assess what key performance indicators (KPI) you need to start measuring.

This is achieved by determining candidate indicators and build ways to measure them.

Update your website

Landing pages

Why landing pages are so important.

What are landing pages? 

Landing pages are ordinary web pages, but instead of being referenced somewhere within your website from a menu item or related link, it is either completely separate from your website and referenced from an external website or directory, or intentionally referenced from within the site to track a specific action.

Marketing Workshops

Try our marketing workshops for FREE

The first FREE introductory workshop will cover the business identity section of the brand development training programme. 

This 45 minute call will cover the following areas: 

  • Splitting your marketing activities into customer acquisition and customer nurturing marketing strategies 
  • Add clarity to your objectives by asserting a well defined USP 
  • Generate a business posture by presenting value and results combined with your passion to deliver 

The complete workshop programme includes Marketing Analysis, Content Marketing, Information Architecture, Messaging Strategy and Measuring Success. These workshops can be arranged as 45 minute telephone / Zoom calls to be held once a week (a time and day that fits). Those companies who wish to take this further can arrange one-2-one training or join an existing workshop group held on Wednesdays or Thursdays.

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Communicating trust

Reliance

Communicating trust

How to Develop and Build Trusting Relationships with your Customers.

All business relationships will share an element of risk during a transaction. The level of risk a business is prepared to take will depend on the perceived trust between the provider of services and the requester of services. 

This is particularly critical in situations where the provider cannot be forced to co-operate in assisting or delivering services to the requester. It is in these situations where trust is a valuable quality and will greatly influence the likelyhood of a satisfactory transaction.

Communicating trust

What is trust?

Two quotes that I believe best describes trust in a business relationship are:

  •  "Trust is a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another." Rousseau [1] 
  • "An individual's belief in, and willingness to act on the basis of, the words, actions, and decisions of another." Lewicki [2]

In order to measure the level of trust in a relationship, the attributes or qualities of trust in both provider and requester must be determined. The overall weight of these trust attributes can then be balanced, provider attributes against requester attributes, to determine whether the resulting trust has a positive or negative influence on the relationship. 

Important provider attributes that will influence trust are: 

  • the level of reputation or integrity of the provider 
  • the level of benevolence of the provider 
  • the level of ability (knowledge, skill, competency) of the provider 

Important requester attributes that will influence trust are: 

  • the level of reliance on the provider 
  • the level of confidence in the provider 
  • the level of immediacy or desperation of the requester 

It is therefore these measurable attributes of the provider and the requester that must be developed in order to build trust.

References:
[1] Rousseau, D. M., Sitkin, S. B., Burt, R. S., and Camerer, C. (1998). "Not so Different After All: A Cross-Discipline View of Trust," in Academy of Management Review, 23, 393-404.

[2] Lewicki, R. J., McAllister, D. J., & Bies, R. J. (1998). Trust and distrust: New relationships and realities. Academy of Management Review, 23, 438-458.

Levels of trust

Identifying Discrete Levels of Trust

When analysing trust between businesses, initially it will appear to be identifiable by a simple linear scale. 

This scale could indicate a value from no trust increasing to implicit trust. 

However, when reviewing trust between long term business partners, it becomes apparent that relationships are complex. In these cases the relationship has matured to a state where the provider and requester have shared, adopted and combined their reputation, intentions, beliefs and culture. 

With long term relationships, repeated tests of trust will establish a deeper understanding of shared values. Trust will change and mature to higher levels when emotional connections between provider and requester become stronger. Common goals will establish themselves resulting in an awareness and concern for mutual needs to keep the trusted relationship strong.

Developing and Building Trust 

Trust will only evolve between provider and requester if the trust attributes are nurtured and developed:

Consistency

Reputation and integrity

Be consistent 

Behave in a consistent and predictable way. 

Develop communication processes to ensure that any correspondence is followed by action. Honour your commitments to reinforce your integrity of 'We do what we say we will do'. 

Open dialogue 

Communicate openly. Give accurate and impartial information to the best of your abilities. Your motives should be clear. As you are willing to act transparently, you can be measured for compliance with any agreements.

Benevolence

Benevolence

Show concern 

Demonstrate sensitivity to the requesters needs, desires and interests. If the requester can see any self-interest in the transaction that puts them at a disadvantage, the trust will appear to be lost. 

Be sincere

Demonstrate your willingness to earn their trust. Disclose your motives and intentions fully and openly. Take actions that promote your values that you desire their trust.

Ability

Ability

Perform competently 

Perform to published guidelines and operating procedures. Demonstrate proficiency in carrying out your obligations. Keep your skills and abilities up to date and promote your qualifications. 

Share control 

By giving trust, trust will be returned. Avoid hoarding control by inviting others to share decision making.

Influence ability

Reliance

Create collaboration agreements. 

Establish environments where both parties gain, both short term and long term. Build collaborative networks where trusted partners are encouraged to create joint ventures. Ensure that these collaboration agreements make positive results easier and more likely. 

Become partners. 

Act as an agent and promote each partners products and services. Consider creating joint products. This will result in a shared identity that defines their commonality. This can be strengthened with unified services and activities.

Confidence

Confidence

Create a common identity

Share marketing strategies and build unity and coherence in a group message. Promote shared values. Focus on their interests and and show concern by listening and learning about their needs. Demonstrate your confidence in them by recognising the contributions of others.

Marketing Workshops

Try our marketing workshops for FREE

The first FREE introductory workshop will cover the Business Posture section of the Strategy Builder training programme. 

This 45 minute call will cover the following areas: 

  • Splitting your marketing activities into customer acquisition and customer nurturing marketing strategies 
  • Add clarity to your objectives by asserting a well defined USP 
  • Generate a business posture by presenting value and results combined with your passion to deliver 

The complete workshop programme includes Marketing Analysis, Content Marketing, Information Architecture, Improving Communication and Measuring Success. These workshops can be arranged as 45 minute telephone / Zoom calls to be held once a week (a time and day that fits). Those companies who wish to take this further can arrange one-2-one training or join an existing workshop group held on Wednesdays or Thursdays.

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Research your industry

Research your industry

Research your industry

Gain an understanding of the industry you reside by identifying how to enter the marketplace, see the current trends and compete with other brands.

Any market research you do must be backed up with data you can rely on. This can either be collected yourself using questionnaires and polls, or obtained from trusted sources such as academic journals or the Office for National Statistics (ONS). 

Explore your industry statistics by gathering the following information:

  • What statistical information is available?
  • What information can you gather that indicates market size and number of customers?
  • What financial data is available in order to approximate industry revenue?
  • What standards and regulations are required to operate in this industry?
  • What influencing factors affect this industry? Laws / regulations / weather / fashion / technology / etc
Competitor analysis

Competitor analysis

Identify the competitors in your industry and investigate their perceived performance compared to you.

Use a chart using an x-axis representing satisfaction and a y-axis representing market share.

  • Split the chart  into quadrants: Contenders, Leaders, Niche and High-performance.
  • Represent each competitor as a circle, categorise each one by placing the circle  in one of the quadrants on the chart.
  • Determine each competitors price points, value propositions and offers.
  • Analyse each competitors marketing strategy in terms of how they give, share and serve.

 

Market gap

Identify market gaps that your business could fill.

Know how your competitors are performing and identify needs that are currently not being filled.

  • How do your competitors fall short of these needs?
  • What do consumers want? What results they looking for?
  • Find market gaps that you can fill with your products and services.
  • Explore ways you can differentiate between these offerings and your competitors products and services.
  • Investigate how you currently give, share and serve for the needs in this gap. What can you give, share and server more?
Customer Analysis

Define your target market

With your knowledge of the industry, the businesses you are competing with and the identified market gaps you can fill, you can now define your target market.

  • Is there a particular demographic or psycho-graphic segment of your target market you can focus on?
  • What particular challenges do these segments experience?
  • How can you match your products and services to each segment?

 

Barriers to entry

Identify barriers to entry

Determine the factors that are preventing your business from entering the marketplace.

Financial obstacles and risks

The initial investment required to cover product development, technology, patent protection, stock etc. needs to be judged as viable within your current working turnover and cash-flow limitations.

Regulatory obstacles and risks

Determine what legal costs, regulatory compliance, certifications and any other requirements need to be met.

Operational obstacles and risks

Assess the current market appetite for your business and determine the external factors that may be affecting customer spending.

 

Marketing Workshops

Try our marketing workshops for FREE

The first FREE introductory workshop will cover the Business Posture section of the Strategy Builder training programme. 

This 45 minute call will cover the following areas: 

  • Splitting your marketing activities into customer acquisition and customer nurturing marketing strategies 
  • Add clarity to your objectives by asserting a well defined USP 
  • Generate a business posture by presenting value and results combined with your passion to deliver 

The complete workshop programme includes Marketing Analysis, Content Marketing, Information Architecture, Improving Communication and Measuring Success. These workshops can be arranged as 45 minute telephone / Zoom calls to be held once a week (a time and day that fits). Those companies who wish to take this further can arrange one-2-one training or join an existing workshop group held on Wednesdays or Thursdays.

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Managed hosting and support

Resilience

Managed hosting and support with Netflare: your gateway to reliability and peace of mind

At Netflare, we understand that your website is the lifeline of your online presence.

That's why we offer comprehensive managed hosting and support services designed to keep your website running smoothly, securely, and efficiently. With our range of hosting solutions and dedicated support team, you can focus on growing your business while we take care of the technical aspects. Explore the benefits of partnering with Netflare for your hosting needs:

Shared hosting

1: Shared hosting

Ideal for small to medium-sized websites, shared hosting allows multiple websites to share resources on a single server. 

This cost-effective option is perfect for businesses looking for an affordable hosting solution without compromising on performance and reliability. Our shared hosting plans include robust security features and proactive monitoring to ensure your website stays online and protected against potential threats.

Hybrid cloud

2: Virtual machine hosting on Netflare's hybrid cloud

Experience the flexibility and scalability of virtual machine hosting on Netflare's own private / hybrid cloud infrastructure. 

With virtual machine hosting, you can customise your server resources based on your specific requirements, ensuring optimal performance and cost-efficiency. Our private / hybrid cloud environment offers enhanced security, reliability, and redundancy, giving you peace of mind knowing your website is hosted on a robust and resilient platform.

Dedicated servers

3: Dedicated servers

For high-traffic websites and mission-critical applications, dedicated bare metal servers provide unparalleled performance, reliability, and control. 

With dedicated hardware resources, you have full access to the server's processing power, memory, and storage, allowing you to optimise performance and tailor the server environment to meet your unique needs. Our bare metal servers are housed in state-of-the-art data centres and backed by 24/7 monitoring and support to ensure maximum up-time and reliability.

Google Cloud

4: Google Cloud Computing Services

Harness the power and scalability of Google Cloud Comuting Services for your hosting needs. 

As a Google Cloud Partner, Netflare offers seamless integration with Google's cloud infrastructure, providing unmatched performance, scalability, and reliability for your website or application. With Google Cloud Computing Services, you benefit from global load balancing, automatic scaling, and built-in security features, ensuring your website remains fast, secure, and available to users worldwide.

Support

Hosting support and maintenance

Regardless of the hosting option you choose, Netflare provides comprehensive hosting support to ensure your website stays online with minimum downtime. 

Our team of experienced technicians and support specialists are available 24/7 to address any issues or concerns you may have, allowing you to focus on your core business objectives. From proactive monitoring and security updates to performance optimization and troubleshooting, we've got you covered every step of the way.

Contact us

Contact Netflare to find out more about your hosting options

With Netflare's managed hosting and support services, you can enjoy the benefits of reliable, secure, and high-performance hosting solutions tailored to your unique requirements. 

Whether you're running a small business website or managing a large-scale e-commerce platform, we have the expertise and infrastructure to support your growth and success in the digital world. Partner with Netflare today and experience the difference of managed hosting done right.

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The key to successful marketing strategies

The key to successful marketing strategies

The key to successful marketing strategies

How to get real results from your website and grasp the key to successful content marketing strategies.

The biggest problem that most small businesses face is how to attract and win new business. 

When you get a new customer, no doubt your service will be excellent, you will deliver according to your promises and this customer will continue to buy from you for many years.

Crowd

But when you market your services, the promises you offer are also being promised by many other companies.

If only you could get more prospects to experience your excellent and reliable service.

Then they would realise that you are one of the few businesses that actually do deliver the value and results you promise. 

The investment you put into internet marketing to find new prospects brings poor returns because the material you use is mostly ignored and at best read with scepticism. The reason is because the prospect has no basis to believe your claims and will see the risk as too high until they actually experience the delivery of what you have promised. 

The solution is to create two different internet marketing strategies. Create a front-end marketing strategy to acquire new customers and a back-end marketing strategy to nurture your existing customers.

If most of your business comes from your existing customers, then your back-end marketing strategy is all about clarifying your services to deliver the highest possible value and results that you can consistently achieve.

Keep it clear and concise

With this strategy, your customers will implicitly trust you and continue to buy from you.

You no longer need to focus on the percentage income from the first sale. 

Calculating the lifetime value of a typical customer based on your new back-end marketing strategies, you can now increase your investment in customer acquisition activities and consider new strategies to make it really easy for prospects to become customers. 

Your front-end marketing strategies will achieve the successes you have always sought by introducing such powerful and irresistible offers to your targeted prospects for their first purchase that they will find it impossible to pass by. 

Explore what offers you could use for the front-end marketing strategies. Of the normal products and services you would offer a prospect, consider what part or aspect of your offer you could make available for a substantially reduced price, or even free. Test these offers to find which ones appeal to your prospects. 

You can then build up a strong portfolio of offers to make your investment in customer acquisition pay for itself many times over to produce an extremely successful and powerful front-end marketing strategy.

Marketing Workshops

Try our marketing workshops for FREE

The first FREE introductory workshop will cover the Business Posture section of the Strategy Builder training programme. 

This 45 minute call will cover the following areas: 

  • Splitting your marketing activities into customer acquisition and customer nurturing marketing strategies 
  • Add clarity to your objectives by asserting a well defined USP 
  • Generate a business posture by presenting value and results combined with your passion to deliver 

The complete workshop programme includes Marketing Analysis, Content Marketing, Information Architecture, Improving Communication and Measuring Success. These workshops can be arranged as 45 minute telephone / Zoom calls to be held once a week (a time and day that fits). Those companies who wish to take this further can arrange one-2-one training or join an existing workshop group held on Wednesdays or Thursdays.

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Scenario analysis

Scenario analysis

Scenario analysis

How to Know what Information Your Prospects and Customers Want to Read.

Performing a customer scenario analysis will help you understand your customer's needs / questions and allow you to identify the key benefits that your services or products provide for a customer. This, in turn, allows you to develop a website response that addresses each customer need / question. 

This analysis is performed by considering individual customer types with a specific quality issue and identifying relevant scenarios that describe their situation. 

These scenarios are then used to identify questions. From this, you can plan specific website responses for each question. These responses may be represented as either website copy or for a case study. 

By understanding your customers’ needs more fully and incorporating a response to this understanding into your website, you can build confidence in the customer that, with you, they will get a higher level of service or better product than from anywhere else.

Scenario paths

How to Carry out Customer Scenario Analysis

Use the columns in the table below to outline individual customer scenarios and possible website responses.

CustomerQuality IssueScenarioQuestionsCase study responseContent response

Customer:

Indicate your customer type eg Joe Public - limited technical knowledge

Quality Issue:

Pick up on quality issues identified as part of the Customer Relationship Analysis and link these into particular customer types. 

Scenario:

Describe possible scenarios for a given customer type e.g. afraid to use credit card on the internet.

Questions:

Indicate posssible questions the customer may have for a given scenario.There are five key question types a customer is likely to ask:

  • Can you solve my problem? 
  • Will it work for me? 
  • What’s in it for me? 
  • Why choose you? 
  • What’s next? 

Use these question types as a starting point and make them specific to your customer scenario e.g. How safe is it to buy goods over the internet? 

Case Study response / Content Response:

Identify specific benefits which address these questions and corresponding content or case study headlines.

Marketing Workshops

Try our marketing workshops for FREE

The first FREE introductory workshop will cover the Business Posture section of the Strategy Builder training programme. 

This 45 minute call will cover the following areas: 

  • Splitting your marketing activities into customer acquisition and customer nurturing marketing strategies 
  • Add clarity to your objectives by asserting a well defined USP 
  • Generate a business posture by presenting value and results combined with your passion to deliver 

The complete workshop programme includes Marketing Analysis, Content Marketing, Information Architecture, Improving Communication and Measuring Success. These workshops can be arranged as 45 minute telephone / Zoom calls to be held once a week (a time and day that fits). Those companies who wish to take this further can arrange one-2-one training or join an existing workshop group held on Wednesdays or Thursdays.

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Create marketing strategies with rock-solid foundations

Create marketing strategies with rock-solid foundations

Create marketing strategies with rock-solid foundations

Master strategic thinking to evolve and connect with your audience.

Find out how Netflare brand development workshops ignite your passion to deliver outstanding products and services to your target customer. 

Let Netflare show you how to create and implement coherent marketing strategies that build and retain a trusted relationship between you and your ideal audience.

Netflare is a Cambridge based digital agency, specialising in delivering high quality web services utilising the Drupal content management system.

Netflare offers a complete design, development and hosting service for simple sites through to full ecommerce packages. We can even help maximise your business investment in your website via our own marketing training package - so you can effectively manage your own marketing strategy.

Call us today on 01954 202 464 for an initial discussion about your website or marketing requirements.

Take these six steps to build your marketing strategy

Netflare offer a full range of services to guide your business strategies from idea to implementation. 

The brand development workshops are designed to help you focus on a strategy that works, target your ideal customer, write great content using language they understand, measure your success and improve communication with each of your customer segments.

More about brand development

Business identity

1: Business identity

Business identity is all about identifying and developing your passion behind the business, the value and results you deliver to your clients, and how you differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Marketing Analysis

2: Marketing analysis

Steps to get your marketing organised, bring clarity to your existing strategies, and maximise your potential by creating an effective marketing hub.

Writing Styles

3: Content marketing

Learn the secrets of writing great marketing content: find the best way to package your message so that the reader immediately sees how it is relevant and easily understood with your intended meaning.

Website strategy

4: Website strategy

Introducing a new way of thinking about managing the content on your website

Measuring Success

5: Business analytics

Focus on results by measuring your KPI's. The key to this is knowing how to effectively collect and utilise the right information in a way that makes key business decisions clear and obvious.

Improving communication with messaging strategy

6: Messaging strategy

Become proactive and improve communication with email. When combining newsletters with autoresponders, you will have the ability to build credibility and trust with your customers and prospects.

Do you need a Netflare Chief Marketing Officer to help build your business?

Solutions in action

Here are a few examples of what you Netflare can do for you.

New business

Attract new business

Stand out from the competition by thinking differently about your marketing:

  1. Win new customers by reducing the perceived risk with an irresistible offer for their first sale.
  2. Develop trust and improve clarity with your existing customers by continually delivering value.
  3. Increase the life-time value of each customer by up-selling and cross-selling so you can increase your investment on the first sale.
Trust Funnel

Create explosive growth by nurturing your customers

Build strong relationships and nurture your customers:

  1. Open opportunities for your customers by making available increasing levels of value.
  2. Categorise your customer base into layers of trust and target each layer with services they value.
  3. Build and shape your products and services to be tuned for each trust layer.
Writing power content

Write powerful targeted content

Write content with relevance and clarity:

  1. Package the message you want to get across.
  2. Launch the message with clear intentions.
  3. Support the message with proof of ability and integrity.
  4. Edify the message with your passion and reputation.
Search engine friendly

Be naturally optimised for search engines (SEO)

Getting found on the search engines doesn't have to be difficult:

  1. Write content using the correct syntax.
  2. Ensure each sentence has a subject, a verb and an object.
  3. Use synonyms where appropriate to describe your products and services.
  4. Use HTML styling such as header tags, lists and tables as required, but always prioritise the clarity of each sentence.
Google analytics

Measure with analytics tools

Determine your key performance indicators by knowing the purpose of each marketing strategy

  1. Recognise the desired results - tangible and intangible.
  2. Consider what information would help to determine whether the result was being achieved.
  3. For each indicator, consider what could be used to measure it.
  4. Determine the method of measuring the chosen indicators and what needs to be done to the website to begin measuring.
Autoresponder email

Connect with your customers

Keep in touch with prospects and existing customers with email marketing:

  1. Automatically follow up enquiries with an email containing something of interest.
  2. Take your prospect along incremental steps with auto-responder emails to help differentiate you.
  3. Keep your customers informed and educated with impartial information to help them make a buying decision.

Latest info

If you'd like to know more about our workshops, modern design websites or hosting:

Schedule a Zoom appointment

 
Fulfilment service and support

Otherwise, let us know your requirements

Call Netflare now on 01954 202 464 to discuss your website and marketing ideas.

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