One of my home improvement clients sent me an email to thank me for the early web results he was getting from his revised home page. He wrote, “Although the changes have only been active for around eight weeks, the already good phone traffic from the Internet has had a dramatic change.”
He then added, “Analytics and statistics aside, we still do it the old fashioned way, ‘How did you hear about us?’”
I chuckled as I read that last line because I had nagged him to load Google Analytics code on his website for tracking web results, like how many people are visiting his site, which keywords are they using, what cities they are from, etc.
He never did get that tracking code loaded.
But it’s okay. He’s doing the best web tracking possible. Nothing beats getting into the routine of directly asking your customers, “How did you hear about us?”
And it’s so easy to forget. Today, I had a call from someone out-of-state inquiring about my services. I spoke with the woman for about five minutes. When I hung up, I realized I had forgotten to ask how she heard about me.
Because she was out-of-state, it’s easy to assume that she found me through a Google search. But it very well could have been something else. It could have been from an article, a LinkedIn query, a personal referral, or even a blog comment I left on someone else’s blog.
So today I made a mental note to NOT forget to ask the next time someone calls.
Easy Web Tip #155: You just never know how your customers find you if you don’t directly ask. So ask.
