Do you know when your customer is active on the internet?
One of our clients is Malvern Family History Society. Despite not being the biggest society in the world, they have a very active website with new news added regularly, a Facebook page and Twitter feed. There are also various forms on the website which enable people to contact the society for various reasons. This includes a general “contact us” which receives enquiries on family and local history.
Monitoring website activity
We do use Google Analytics to monitor activity on the website but there is also another good indicator of use: how many enquiries are received.
During the summer the number drops and then as the evenings draw in the number of enquiries goes up significantly, last year it more than trebled. The reason? Well, people who do family history research tend to be mature and are often retired. In the summer, they garden and get involved in outdoor activities whilst it is light. Come September, it starts getting dark in the evenings and they start to get back to family history.
Lessons to learn
The above is a very specific example, but the principles apply to all businesses and organisations.
Knowing when your potential customer or user is online is vital. It helps you know:
- When you need someone around to support them
- The best time to put out marketing messages
- When the effort spent creating new content will be most rewarded.
So, have a look at your information. Yes, Google Analytics will give you some information but what else can you use to decide how best to reach your potential customers. It will be different for each business.
Check this out for yours now!