If you are starting out a new small business, as a therapist, healer, or counselor, you might think it is not really useful to record any numbers about your current income—I mean, you can basically tally it all in your head, right?
Why is Quantifying Your Business Important?
Wrong.
No matter what size your business is, you should quantify as much key information as you possibly can on a daily basis, if at all possible.
Why is this useful?
- It helps you confront uncomfortable realities (and thus, solve the issues relating to them if necessary.)
Did you make more money this month than last month? Is your business growing, really? Are you spending money faster than you are making it? When will it run out?
- It motivates you by showing your progress.
If you are making 15% more money every month, it may not feel like it. But if you are tracking the numbers, you can see the improvement and be motivated to continue on.
- It provides a foundation for making decisions and speaking to others about the business.
If you use a coach, want a loan, or want to invest in other ways, if you already have realnumbers, you can quickly see if a particular [advertising] investment is wise or not so wise, fill in your coach on your current status, or provide information to people who might be willing to support your business with investment.
What kind of statistics do you need?
Start off with the absolute basics.
For example:
- Number of clients per day
- Income for each client
- Number of enquiries (break these down by method—telephone, e-mail, etc.)
- Number of new clients
- Number of returning clients
Then with this information, you can calculate:
- Income per day/week/month
- % returning clients
- % new clients
- Number of new clients/enquiry (perhaps per month)
Just type these into an Excel spreadsheet or use Google docs at first. After only a week of this, you will look at the data, and it will start speaking to you.
This will provide meaning about:
1) how many people you are touching
2) what difference you are making for those you are touching
3) what they feel that difference is worth, and more.
For information about how web advertising figures into all of this, see my “Understanding and Improving Your Business Using Web Statistics”.
Try it for a week and feel free to put your comments below.
Would you like some help with this? Give me a call. Skype: tondeaf / ryan@sparkmk.com or using the contact form on this site.
Understanding and Improving Your Business Using Web Statistics
Have you read my article called “Why Quantifying Your Business is Critical”? If not, you should probably read that first. You can find that here: Why Quantifying Your Business is Critical
This article tells you how to expand your business using statistics from your web site
If you have a web page and know how to get site statistics, here is how to use them to grow your business. (You will automatically receive statistics nowadays with virtually every hosting package—however, the more you invest, the more statistics you will receive.)
What statistics are the most important?
Let’s just start with these.
Why does it matter how many people visit your web site? If you use your web site like most businesspeople,its primary mission is lead generation. (A lead is someone who might become a client. The process of identifying them is called ‘lead generation’.)
You probably have an e-mail address, telephone number, and/or contact form on the web site. You might even have a newsletter.
You know how many calls you receive. You know how many e-mails you receive. Start tracking those in Excel.
Then, begin to track:
Why bother?
First of all, to solve problems in your business.
If you notice 10,000 people coming to your web site per month, but you are not getting anyone to contact you, you might check your web site:
If you are tracking these numbers and you notice a sudden dropoff on any of them, you can immediately see something is wrong and go correct it. I have known people whose websites were down for weeks without even noticing—because they weren’t looking at their statistics on at least a weekly basis.
And the Good News?
The other way stats help you is to plan and track positive movement in your business. How does your new article or Facebook post influence your numbers? How many people came to the site that day? Did the newsletter signup percentage remain the same?
As you optimize your content and your calls to action (invitations for people to do things such as signup for a newsletter or call you on the phone), you can track how your percentages (such as newsletter signups per 100 visitors) move and thus keep what works and abandon what doesn’t, gently improving week by week until you reach your goals for your website.
How is it Done?
You don’t have to write down web statistics every day. But you should note calls and contacts every day.
Once a week, fill in the same Excel sheet that contains your other other business statistics with the number of visitors each day. Put them in the same chart as your other daily statistics and you can begin to calculate on a monthly basis:
And any other statistics which may be meaningful for you.
Tracking these statistics will help you see not only if you are getting more people to the web site, but whether your effectiveness per person is increasing as well.
If you do this, you will be ahead of 99% of people who market using the web. If you haven’t read the other article about tracking business statistics, you can read about that as well.
If you would like some help with this, give me a call. Skype: tondeaf / ryan@sparkmk.com or using the contact form on this site.