GETTING TO KNOW THEM

KNOW THY CUSTOMER. If there’s a first commandment of business, this is it. Just dealing with customers in person can tell you a lot about them. But for web entrepreneurs, getting to know customers is more of a challenge. It’s important to tackle this since knowing your visitors helps you more precisely target them. If you suddenly notice a flood of visitors from, say, Japan, you could decide to edit part of your site to make it even more attractive to those users. If you see that you’re a hit with your target audience on a particular college campus or within a government agency, you can post a special deal just for those people. If you’re marketing locally and see that you’re getting a lot of traffic from a specific part of your city or state, that may be a signal to market there.
TRACKING YOUR TRAFFIC
The good news is that every website visitor leaves a trail. As we said earlier, your web hosting company should be a great help here. Find out what (free) reports your web host offers. When properly analyzed, these reports will give you the scoop on your visitors and key traffic trends. But don’t stop there. Just reading the reports isn’t enough—you need to use them. Familiarize yourself with the information, and then you can start tracking your site’s performance. You’ll be able to tell what impact a specific promotion has on increasing traffic or boosting business on the site.
If your web hosting company doesn’t provide these traffic reports, you can get into your log files yourself. Go to your web hosting service and look for a directory called “Logs.” Download the most recent file and have a look (any text editor should open the file). Plenty of programs can help you do this. The analysis will enable you to see exactly where visitors come from, which pages they’re viewing, how long they’re staying, which links on the site are getting the most traffic, and, if you have an e-commerce site, which products on your site are being sold and where people give up and bail out of the ordering process. The traffic reports from your web hosting service are a great first step toward getting to know your customers.
COLLECT E-MAIL ADDRESSES
You can get information from your visitors by giving them a reason to register or provide their e-mail addresses. You could offer a free sample, an e-book, a free e-newsletter subscription, or a white paper or report on a topic relevant to your audience. Another easy way to reach potential customers (and convert them to actual clients) is to provide a free 30-minute consultation. This is a great way to “strut your stuff” and impress people with what you have to offer in a no-risk atmosphere.
STAYING IN TOUCH
Once you have their e-mail addresses (with permission to send them mail), keep in touch by sending out newsletters, discount coupons, special offers or advance notices of sales and other promotions. For more on e-mail marketing. Smart business owners use their sites to build customer databases, mailing lists and user profiles, which give them a better idea of who their customers are and how to better serve them. You can do this by adding a “Join my mailing list” sign-up box on your homepage, making it simple for visitors to add themselves to your e-mail list. Finally, make sure you read and respond to your visitors’ e-mails. These are a great source of information about what people like and don’t like about your site and your business. Nothing beats advice straight from the customers’ mouths. A word of caution here: Don’t react to one or two comments. Look for themes or trends in what your customers are telling you or asking for, and then react appropriately.