Internet Online Search Marketing for Law Firms

How Web Analytics and Website Traffic Analysis can Boost Return on Marketing Investment for Lawyers

Web Analytics. What a horrible word.

Not horrible in terms of what it means, it's just not very user friendly.

When reviewing online results with solicitor and lawyer clients, I often prefer the phrase 'website visitor behaviour' which is far more business friendly than 'web analytics'.

'Web analytics' just means being analytical about your web activities and it's a very important part of your business activities, whether you're engaged in online marketing or not.

Even if your firm doesn't currently engage in any search engine optimisation or other forms of online search engine marketing, you really ought to be using some kind of web analytics tool such as Google Analytics or Yahoo analytics.

These are two very valuable tools which the respective vendors don't even charge for.

Previously these kinds of advanced tools would attract a monthly service fee, many similar tools still do.

These tools became freely available when Google bought out a company called Urchin Stats, a company that charged for the use of its reporting tool. Google acquired them and made the tool free.

Similarly Yahoo Web analytics was previously IndexTools.

The value of these tools is in holding marketing campaigns accountable for their results.

Traditional marketing has always had a lot of excuses ready if a campaign didn't seem to be performing very well in terms of return on investment.

The reason that these excuses tended to be accepted was because of the lack of accurate reporting, and even then often with traditional marketing, you're investing in the technique not necessarily the result.

The Internet is a results oriented media, which is why it is having such a significant impact on the marketing world as well as the business world at large.

No longer is it acceptable to hand over many thousands of pounds to buy 'space' in a paper based directory or a thousand or so to buy 'space' in a newspaper or magazine publication that 'has a readership of 50,000 business owner and 500,000 consumers' you are told.

The question is how much value is there in generic exposure?

Sure enough awareness campaigns to build brand awareness is still important, but because the Internet provides so much choice, loyalty among customers is slipping.

It's becoming all the about the results. Results for the buyer, result for the seller, result for the people in between.

Without an accurate way of tracking exactly what happened to a marketing expenditure, there is no way of knowing whether to continue the investment or to close it off.

Web analytics tools give you this insight, both for your online and your offline marketing campaigns.

These tools will record everything about the person. If they are on your website, it's fair to say 95% of those people have some kind of interest in your offering, leaving the other 5% who may have arrived by accident.

Imagine if you could hold a review meeting every month with your senior staff and within 5 minutes, be seeing a report showing that your company received 200 enquiries the previous month, 30% of which where recommendations, 20% where from your Yellow Pages advert, 40% were from search engines and 10% were from online adverts.

Investing some time upfront of a properly setup analytics system for your website can make this possible.

As I said at the beginning of my post, even if you're not actively promoting your firm online, you can use web analytics to track offline marketing campaigns.

For more information on these tools visit the Yahoo Analytics or Google Analytics website today.

Chris Coney

Labels: google analytics, return on investment, traffic monitoring, web analytics, yahoo analytics

posted by Chris Coney BSc at 16:03