Online businesses (the smart ones anyway) have been tracking clicks for several years.  The information provided by common analytics applications allows companies to not only understand where their visitors are coming from and what they are doing upon arrival, it provides webmasters a deeper understanding of opportunities for improvement and lends insight to strategies that are currently effective.

Tracking conversions online is simple with common, out of the box analytics packages like Google Analytics if you are lucky enough to define your conversion as an e-commerce purchase or visit to a particular website page… but if the goal of your site is to generate a phone call, unfortunately it’s not as easy to track.

Many webmasters settle on tracking the number of page views of the contact page as a “good enough” metric for determining site visits that generate phone calls… but there is a much more effective method.

In order to get a true measurement of  “phone call conversions” one should set up a couple virtual phone numbers that are set up to simply forward to your regular business phone.  Most companies that offer these are able to provide statistics on the number of times each unique number is dialed, which provides valuable insight into which pages site visitors are “converting to callers” from.  Many carriers offer these virtual numbers for $10 or less per month.

From here on out, consider using different virtual phone numbers on different marketing campaigns to allow for more specific lead generation tracking.  It may cost your company an additional $50 a month, but it’s a safe bet that after a couple months you will be amazed by the data and will have a more “clear focus” going into the future.

Hundreds of thousands of small business owners are once again finding themselves at a crossroad and are questioning the effectiveness of having a website.  10 years ago (or 5 years ago if you are here in South Dakota) many small businesses decided to establish an online presence primarily because everyone was doing it.

Unfortunately, 99% of businesses simply posted an online version of a promotional brochure and haven’t touched the site in years.

These small business owners still tend to question the effectiveness of online marketing due to the lack or performance in their “web 1.0″ website.  In the current economic climate, it’s unfortunate that more companies don’t understand the value of online marketing due to it’s low cost and high potential returns.

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When used effectively, a company website can do the work of dozens of sales people…. dozens of sales people that work 24 hours a day / 7 days a week, don’t require insurance, don’t require workspace and don’t pring the post-it notes home with them.

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Here are 3 Methods that Small Businesses Should Consider To Put Their Website To Work:

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1. Search Engine Optimization

Before you can put your company website to work for you, you need to make it easy for people to find.  Without receiving a steady stream of targeted traffic, a website is nothing more than a liability.

SEO is best way to boost your online visibility.  Simply optimizing your website for a few targeted keywords can result in a flood of site visitors… visitors that searched for exactly what your business has to offer.

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2. Capturing Leads Online

More and more businesses are finding that their website can be a huge source of lead generation.  In a lot of cases, the small investment it takes to add the functionality to a company website is easily made up for with the first sale attributed to the site.

There are several ways companies can capture a site visitor’s phone number or e-mail address without being invasive at all.  By simply offering a “free price quote” or the ability to download a “free report”, a company can accumulate hundreds of targeted leads pretty quickly.  These leads can be followed up with a phone call from your sales team or e-mail communication.

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3. Placement Targeted Ads

One method of online advertising that is slowly gaining popularity is utilizing Google Adwords placement targeted ads.  These are ads on the Google content network that allow you to determine the exact location on an exact page of a site that participates in the Google content network.  Also, rather than paying per ad impression, you only pay if somebody clicks the ad and goes to your website… and you only pay what you want to pay.

This is an excellent way to increase your site visibility on authority websites like New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CBS Sports Line and hundreds of thousands more.   In many instances you can pay pennies per click… and all other impressions cost nothing.

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