Capturing data via your website

Many websites are under-used for simple marketing related activities, including my own!



A website is one of your most important marketing tools, and capturing your visitors data for marketing purposes only strengthens your ability to communicate to an already interested audience.



When people visit your website, they will be looking for:



1. A particular product or service that they are comparing between websites (usually price comparisons)

2. Information about your company

3. Information about your unique product or service

4. Jobs in your company

5. Information and help on how to do something

6. Contact details of your company

7. Opportunities to get involved, contribute and demonstrate their expertise



Visitors do not accidentally find your website, it is likely that they have:



1. Found your website through a search engine

2. Directly input the address: having saved your site in their favourites/bookmarks tab, or from an advertisement



Web traffic is usually populated by people that have a problem to solve. If they are looking at the jobs in your company for example, the problem is that they are either looking for a new job and you are local to them, or they are unemployed and looking for jobs in a sector that interests them. Visitors do not simply ‘browse’ jobs sites, there is usually an underlining problem that triggers them to type "jobs" into a search engine.

What next



When visitors are on your site, especially if you have something downloadable that answers a particular problem, it is good marketing practice to include a contact box – perhaps with the message "For more information" or "In order to download enter your details". This way you are automatically building yourself a mailing list of visitors interested in your company or your products.



With this data you will be able to cross-sell and up-sell and build a base for launching new reports, information and new products.



It is also a way of building user-groups when you need to ask opinions and collate feedback for further developing those products and creating new reports etc.



Remember at this point you are bound by the data protection act 1998, so keep the data secure, accurate and once the individual tells you to stop sending information, you must stop. Read our Data Protection: Misconceptions of control article for more information.

How to do it



Collecting visitor data is especially easy when you have something on your site that valuable or in demand, or solves a particular problem.



This can be done by:



1. A web contact form that requires visitors to enter their e-mail address, name, location etc

2. An e-mail link so that you receive their request for information directly into your inbox

3. A number to send a text message to, containing name and product

4. A telephone number to ring, where the telephone operator or an automated service records name, e-mail address etc.

5. Signing up form to access a members-area, where information is stored. This is probably the most powerful as your sign up page can be particularly detailed.



We will shortly be adding a post about Landing Pages and their effectiveness in collecting data and selling products and services quickly and easily. Keep visiting the imp-ressions blog for more updates and advice on web design and marketing practices.