chapter 4 making data based decisions from the start
There is no need to guess at things any more, there is so much high quality free information available that you can go straight to the source to further fine tune your efforts. Before you do anything else, here are a few tools to link up with, all you need is a email address and you can start.
google webmaster tools
google adwords keyword planner
bing webmaster tools
google analytics
In the start up phase it is incredibly useful to put your most obvious high money search terms into the google adwords keywords planner, this amazing tool will then give you estimated monthly searches for that search word or term THEN make suggestions for alternatives. This has been a really powerful tool for me, directing me towards high traffic, low competition search terms that would never occurred to me without this tool. For example when researching a website for a friend who runs a hair salon I was surprised to see that “hairdresser” and “hairdresser online” generated more traffic than “hair salon” with a local business like hair dressing it is then easy to combine the search terms with the locality to pull in high-quality business-generating traffic.
Finding out where the traffic is and also what the competition is like for certain keywords and phrases then helps you write more relevant blog posts, launch more effective micro sites and shoot more effective youtube videos. More on all of these later.
Modern accounting packages have good inventory control and reporting functions, this allows you to monitor what is selling well and what is fading. This data can prevent you from tying up precious cash in unpopular or worse still obsolete stock. E-commerce is fiercely competitive and you ignore this data at your peril.
You may love a particular item but if the market says otherwise do not ignore the facts. Successful businesses have to continually ‘get it right’ in a changing world, it is very easy to get on the wrong side of this by making emotional rather than calculated moves. Generate, farm and take note of the data. This really helps you stay on top of trends and keep growing. Trends can of course be seasonal, but an underlying down trend in a certain product or market area must not be ignored.
High quality data driven decisions also take the stress out of planning, it is a great feeling to have confidence in your business planning because you have done your homework and taken the guesswork out of it.
Excel is still king of the numbers for me, I can keep monthly tallies of product sales and set prices and order stock accordingly, in e-commerce things must flow or stock can get stuck and grind to a halt completely.
You must see this happening and get things moving again with sales and offers or precious storage space can become clogged up with slow moving items. The thing about a monthly sales excel sheet is that you can see trends taking shape in front of your eyes. Stay nimble, no flab, this is business, customer demands will be met by someone else if you do not stay on top of them.