Web analytics vs people

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If you want good insight in to web analytics, return on investment (ROI), organisational challenges facing clients and how to manage data, this is yer man.

Garden Hammock

Callisti is working on the seasonal hammock project for a local Galloway company and embracing Actinic 9 as an ecommerce solution.

The website design is trying to capture a fresh outdoor feel which should be an improvement to the legacy look of the original website.

Interestingly, the search term 'hammocks' is very seasonal especially in the UK and we are now noticing the rising traffic to the website as the spring equinox approches. Some of the Adwords tools from PPCBully, keywordcountry and keywordspy.com show the value of a click for this keyword and also who the competitors are. Tough market!

As usual we will be applying Callisti SEO philosophy to the site so that the internal housekeeping assists in keeping CPC down and ROI up.

User testing or website usability

I'm not even sure if usability is actually a word beyond the realms of websites and graphical user interfaces. Anyhow, user testing is a research component of the website usability consultancy service offered by Callisti.

A client's website is examined in several ways: what does the unassuming user discover unprompted when visiting the website; how does the user navigate through the site and what is her experience of this; how does the client intend the website to work; etc.

By compiling the findings we can report back on a convergence strategy that aims to improve ROI and goal conversion from the client's point of view while simultaneously improving user feedback.

SEO is not alchemy

SEO services that professional companies should offer you:

• Online Market research - Competitor and industry research, research into the psychology of the targeted audience, keyword research etc.
• On-site optimisation - On-site changes that are made in order to improve search engine rankings. On-page optimisation can include improving keyword density, writing headings and meta tags, cleaning source code, setting up links etc.
• Copywriting - Writing content for your website is an important part of any search engine optimisation campaign. It doesn't matter if your website ranks #1 if the words don't communicate your message and make the sale.
• Off-site optimisation and marketing - Includes setting up external links, partnerships, manual submission to search engines, directories, setting up ads etc.
• Tracking and ROI Analysis - Tracking traffic changes and patterns as well as accurate ROI analysis is what makes a SEO campaign successful or not.

You should expect to pay for all of the above services, they are all part of search engine optimisation and they all require time, knowledge and other resources in order to be successfully carried out. Some other aspects of SEO consultancy that are likely to incur costs are:

• Email and phone consultations
• Client training and education
• Preparation of reports and other documents and materials related to services to be provided