There's More Than Google on the Interweb
Up until today I used to use an adhoc method of determining what's going on with my merchandise sites. I would look at my Adwords reports to see how much I was spending. I'd look at my CafePress reports to see how much I was selling, and my server logs to get a general idea of how people were finding my site. Today I completed the first part of a database that I've been working on using Access 2003. Rather than getting a general, and sometimes fuzzy, picture of what's going on, I decided I needed a tool that would give me a dashboard view of what's up. Sort of like the difference between data and information. Before I was looking at data. Now I'm looking at information. Building this, I've found, is great exercise in thinking about what information I really need to see in order to make my sites more profitable.

The first part of this application shows me the terms people searched for, what search engine they used, and whether they clicked on a search result or an ad on a search results page. This information tells me a few things, but most importantly it lets me know what people are looking for when they come to my sites (and if I don't have it, I know I should offer it), and it lets me know whether my search engine optimization (SEO) is working or not. In fact, I learned something already. I thought my SEO efforts hadn't been as successful as I hoped, but that was because I was using Google to see my rankings for different relevant terms. What I learned was that my optimization efforts have worked pretty well on Yahoo and MSN. For many search terms my sites are in the first 5 listings. Search for "texas tshirt" on Yahoo right now and you'll find I'm listed as #1. That rocks!

Hopefully I can get this application to a point which will allow me to spend minimal time on managing the sites, while making the best decisions for the sites. As for the next stage of the application, I need to be able to quickly see how my advertising budget influences sales. Using the view of the data from my various reports, it seemed that it didn't make a difference in sales if I spent $10 a day or $2 a day. But perhaps I was missing a sales trend that lags behind the advertising by a few days. I'll have to think about what information is important to making decisions and avoiding displaying too much information. When its all done I'll post some of the screens (and maybe the application itself for those who could use it for their own sites).
- posted by Drew @ 11:45 PM