Plugging Leaks & Finding Opportunities: Web Strategy for Business Growth 

Sure, absolutely.

fall into two categories. One is where you find what I call a leak, know, an area where you've been losing opportunities, revenue, customers, whatever, and you find that leak, which you hadn't been aware of before, and you plug it. And this is where I love analytics, because there are things that you just can't know without looking at the analytics, right? I mean, sometimes people say, can you... Yeah, yeah.

So what would be a typical example of a leak? Yeah. Sorry.

So that's what I was, I was getting to that. Yeah. It's okay. Just to really make the point, the things that you can't know without looking at the analytics, because I know there are still unbelievably people out there who don't necessarily look at the analytics in as much depth as they could. But so for example, one of the most useful things you can do with analytics, if you have a, for example, an e-commerce site or a site with a lot of items or content is to provide a search engine on the site. because you know, so that people can find stuff. So people can find stuff, which is the benefit to the visitor, but what the benefit to you is that you can track those searches. And that tells you an awful lot about it's great, great market research. So, you know, just before I get to the unlocking the leak, for example, it can tell you a lot about how your visitors describe your products and services. And in a lot of companies where you're, you know, you're kind of techie based, or there's a lot of jargon in your industry. there's a lot of temptation to use that jargon because you're used to it. You know exactly what it means, right? But the question is, do your visitors know what it means? Because if they don't, you're going to lose them. They're not going to be looking for the keywords that you're optimizing for, right? They're not going to understand what you offer. so seeing what they're putting into the search engine and as I say, the words that they're using can be very helpful. But for a specific example of plugin Elig, I worked with an engineering components manufacturer. So they sold loads and loads and loads of parts for different types of equipment. And those parts over time either became obsolete and were replaced by a new version or they changed their names or something. And when we looked at the site search engine for this company, we saw a huge number of lost sales because people were putting in old part numbers or the wrong part number and the search engine was just coming back and saying, sorry, we haven't got that. And that was it, right? So then people leave and they go to a competitor to get the part. And then the solution is pretty obvious. It's, know, create a lookup table that maps the old part number onto the new part number or whatever, right? And boom, your leak is plugged and you're back in business for those parts. So, you know, it's not necessarily growth from nothing, but it's, as I say, I think plugging leaks is a really important part of that growth.

you

And secondly, in terms of growth, know, it's looking for, it's seeing new opportunities. So another example, again, it's actually a B2B. I work with B2C and B2B, but I worked with an industrial wax manufacturer and they were actually very well known internationally. And they, you know, they made wax, but only for B2B industrial level sales. They'd done a fantastic job with their SEO. And so, many people were coming to their website who were consumers looking for small amounts of, for example, beeswax so that they could make candles, right? That audience is nothing, is not, is not the buyer of this company from this business. But again, looking at the traffic and the numbers, and, know, again, you can see the search terms that are bringing people to the site. It's quite obvious. And then of course they get to the sales page, they look up beeswax, they get to the sales page, it clearly says, you know, we only sell this in huge amounts. It's industrial and they leave, right? So we actually created a whole new little side business with a little e-commerce site that sold consumer level amounts of beeswax and duckwax and what have you. It was very simple to run, basically ran itself. The SEO is already done, effectively, right? And it's sort of, it's just, it's not the main business, but it generated a nice little revenue stream on the side that just really didn't need an offer. you know, and they designated.

without much of an effort. mean, was kind of, that audience was already coming to their website and they were looking for it. And it's just, there was no motion to actually encash that, you know, potential.

So, and you know, they may be one or two staff members doing some fulfillment, but it really was just easy regular income that they didn't really have to do much to get.

Great, that's great. if somebody's wanting to analyze their traffic or potential leaks, what is the best way forward? How do you do it, basically?

Well, that's a big question. You know, the thing that you have to do is to really understand your own business. And one of the things that I do when I take on a client is, know, the first thing we sit down, we do is sit down and really figure out what is this website trying to do? And most people focus on obviously, you know, get sales or get leads if it's a lead generation site. But

It's lowered but you know.

And you know, and those are the big goals, but there's often lots of other smaller goals along the way. You might be using content in order to engage people or to promote your authority or your expertise. You also want to look at how much you're spending on acquiring visitors, et cetera. So we want, we really want to understand the business and what's supposed to happen on each page. And it's one of my mantras actually, that every page of your site should have its own strategy or should have a clear.

Yep.

defined outcome. Because if you don't drive people around the site and really point them in to what you want them to do next as a result of having seen this piece, they won't. Most of them won't. And I've seen this just again and again. And the site people will say, you know, but it's obvious you're supposed to click there. And I say, you know, it's obvious to you because you're very familiar with the site. But most people won't do very much work to figure out what's next. So really looking for

Verpas are meaning basics.

what's the flow or, you know, what are the desired outcomes? And with that in mind, then we can start saying, okay, is that happening? Is it happening enough? If not, where is it not happening? Where are the leaks? So, you know, each site is different. don't, for me, I don't think that there's necessarily a sort of set methodology. It depends what's going on. And, you know, there's a lot of site owners seem to have this temptation to measure every single metric under the sun that's possible. And that's a crazy thing to do. Because there's really only a point in measuring anything if you know what you're going to do when you get the result, right?

So what are the, like if, what are you, in your opinion, what are like the top five metrics that one should care about when they're analyzing?

Okay, so again, I'm going to push back at you. Sorry. I don't believe in generic. These are the five metrics because it depends on your specific situation today. So if you know you've got a problem, like if you know, for example, somebody came to me recently with his e-commerce site and he was finding that there were an awful lot of product views, some and very few sales. And so what was the problem? Right. So right there, we've got immediate problem. Then we know that's what we want to focus on.

Mm-hmm.

It doesn't make sense to say what are the top, you want, as I say, you want to look for metrics that you can do something about that you would do something about that you would prioritize to know what's going on. And you want to start digging deeper as soon as possible. So you want to get beyond the, know, sorry.

How and how would you do that? mean, what would be your recommendation? Let's say I am like a businessman and I have a website and I maybe it's an e-commerce website and I You know want to understand what is the missed opportunity for me? So How do I you know apply that?

So what you want to do is to start looking at what's going on. So for example, you're getting a ton of visitors, but they're not doing much. So the question is, does that mean that they're the wrong type of visitors? In which case, do you just want to not bother about them? Do you want to see if you have anything that could interest them or not? That kind of stuff that like we just talked about. Or are you getting a ton of visitors and then not doing very much because they can't find your stuff, right? That's another thing that happens.

Yeah.

You can look at pages that have very low visitor levels that are important. Why do they have low visitor levels? Because you're not directing people to them. So you're always looking for the, what do I expect to be happening? Where is that falling apart? What might be the red flags about that?

And then, and I completely can agree with you that, you know, based on your business, based on your objectives, you've got to identify what are the leading and trailing metrics that you want to track.

And the thing that's about those metrics is, like I say, you might have an immediate problem, you figure it out, you you do some testing, you solve it. Those five metrics, I, know, five metrics to focus on is a great number because you can't measure everything at once. But obviously, those five metrics are then going to change. So they're not set in stone at all. They keep moving in accordance with your priorities. Right.

Yeah, they would evolve with your business, they would evolve with your potential focus and everything else. And Philippa, I'm sure you're probably seeing this as well. A lot of our customers are seeing a dip in search-related traffic, especially over the last one year because know, the chat GPDs and the Geminis and perplexities of the world are taking over where people are going for answers. you know, fewer and fewer people, especially on the B2B side, know, product searches are still happening on Google and Amazon, but a lot of times when people are looking for answers, they're actually going to, you know, one of the AI... systems and you know what it is leading to is like you know we've seen up to like 30 40 percent drop in traffic so anything that you have worked upon in the AI space and like are you analyzing that how the trends are you know I mean I most recently I wrote a little article about you know how chat gbd has more searches than Google today So that tells you something that it has become a disruptor. So how does one include that in their web strategy so that when somebody is looking for answers, at least some level of brand recognition and possibly traffic and the ability.

I mean, I guess some of it's inevitable. Hopefully when people, if they want to dig deeper, they would still do that. And I suppose, know, inevitably the other thing is you've got to concentrate on other forms of acquisition as well. YouTube is still essentially the world's second largest search engine. Whenever people are looking for, you know, how to videos, support videos, et cetera. And... You know another thing to do. I mean, it's really antiquated technology, right? But your email list it's very interesting that marketers Consistently even today say that email is one of their top sources of quality visitors So everything that you can do to get somebody onto your email list and then and then use that list I think it's also really valuable Yeah, well, and it's because people have already said they want to hear from you. They've given permission, right?

because it's very targeted. mean, you're targeting the people. Yeah, yeah, even like top of the funnel emails, like if you're doing it right, if you are building the right target list, like for example, like salespeople doing outreach. You know, they may not have opted in, but they like, you know, research an account, they kind of find the people that they would like to talk to, and then they send them outreach. That typically comes back to your website, or like, you know, so yeah, no, I totally agree. The email is still very, very relevant when done right. You just can't like spray and pray. It has to be very targeted. has to be more one-on-one communication. It's just kind of like you can just load up a list and say, let's send everybody the same exact message and see if they react to it. So, no, totally agree. Yeah, and any advice for like small businesses that are wanting to leverage the potential of their websites. you know, are like the top three things, two things they can do to enhance, you know, the customer experience. And then obviously that results in growth for themselves.

I still think that many, many small businesses are not using analytics to its full potential. So for example, I work a lot with Google Analytics and if you implement Google Analytics, which is still the top analytics package because it's free, et cetera, right? If you implement Google Analytics out in the box as it were, it's not particularly customized and some of its actual default settings are really quite strange, to say the least. So you're much, much better off to make use of it if you are able to customize it to really, again, reflect what you're trying to do. And so, you know, and at the same time, I know that the numbers and charts and graphs and everything else can be completely overwhelming to somebody who's not used to it. I mean, I think there are well over 100, way more, I think, default, you know, things when you log in. Crazy. And, you know, honestly, quite how is anybody supposed to start?

visuals that are brilliant in Google Analytics.

So, you know, if you don't know your way in, and I, this is not a commercial for any either of us, we both do this kind of work, but you know, seriously, get somebody to at least set it up for you, help you understand what's going on. You know, create maybe some reports that will easily update so that you can see things that will actually mean something to you. All those tools are out there, but you know, don't, don't be put off by the amount of data, but you know, harness that data to work for you.

Yeah. Help review.

got it. and I totally agree with you and again data analytics, web analytics is a very complex subject. It's not something that can be done very easily either and I think once done you also have to understand you know what are the next steps. So it's not just like you know I got this picture I know what's working what's not. But then you have to take decisions and then you have to follow up those decisions with like actions. that actually have meaningful results.

which is very interesting because, yes, AI tools are coming into analytics. So they can tell you, look, there's a spur and spike in visitors or something's going on here, but they can't necessarily tell you why and they can't necessarily yet tell you what to do about it most of the time. So I'm hoping that AI isn't gonna take away our jobs just yet.

Well, I think it will augment our jobs. Anybody who's doing analytics, they will rely on more and more AI technology for making their lives easier. But at the end of it, somebody has to understand the business and somebody has to put in the right prompts for the AI agents to work. So we might not be coding as much as we used to in our past lives, but I do think that...

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

the human intervention in analytics is always going to be. mean, it's the amount of data that is getting generated is obviously, you know, exponential growth in that. And when you have such a vast amount of data, technologies like AI will be really helpful in deciphering that and, you know, bringing it together and being able to actually paint a picture. But I think to paint that picture, you still need people that understand the business, that understand what needs to be measured, what's important, what's not, and then go from there. Well, thanks, Philippa. It was amazing talking to you, and I'm sure our audience would have learned a thing or two about analytics, how to approach analytics, and how, most importantly, to use the insights they get from the analytics to foster growth and solve problems.

Thank so much.