The post seems to take lots of time to write.  So, please bear with me as I plan to add the content to this from time to time to complete it.

The Japanese automakers and their English language websites we are going to discuss about are as follows.

Makers & their English websites

1. Toyota
2. Nissan
3. Honda
4. Mitsubishi
5. Mazda
6. Suzuki
7. Isuzu
8. Daihatsu
9. Subaru

Summary of the Findings

Website Elements Studied

Search Engine Compatibility and ranking statistics

1. Country-specific domain such as co.jp
2. Japanese language content
3. Keyword usage in the title tag
4. Links from other local domains
5. Geographical location of the hosting server
6. Local business address as a text on pages of the site
7. Registration of the site in Google Local Business center
8. Geo-targetting preference set in the Google Webmaster Tools
9. Manual review of the site by major search engine employees
10. Address associated with the registration of the domain being targetted

Any comments on the above factors/points? Now, it is your turn now to speak up.

Language
Undoubtedly, Japanese language is one of the most important ranking factors for ranking your website in the Japanese market. However, apart from the ‘mainstream’ Japanese language websites, there is a much smaller market for English language websites as well. Being one of the most lucrative market in the world, lots of foreign companies (mostly small to medium sized) come to Japan to grab their share of the pie. In many of these cases, these foreign businesses either do not pay attention to performing SEO or even designing their websites for the Japanese audience or take too long to respond to the need to establish online presence for their Japanese potential or real customers.

As a consequence, many of the websites owned by foreigners living in Japan, are solely targeted for the English speaking market in Japan. So, there is a still a chance for you to survive and thrive even if you do not make your website in Japanese from the start.

Barriers to an Effective Website ROI Measurement

Here you go.

1. Lack of budget/resources (45%)
2. Lack of strategy (31%)
3. Siloed organization (29%)
4. Lack of understanding (25%)
5. Too much data (18%)
6. Lack of senior management buy-in (18%)
7. Difficulty reconciling data (17%)
8. IT blockages (17%)
9. Lack of trust in analytics (16%)
10. Finding staff (12%)
11. Poor technology (9%)

I was surprised to discover that all the above listed factors (with the only exception of the last one) negatively affecting the measurement of your website ROI are related to non-web analytics tool related activities. They are either related to your strategy, your unwillingness to take any action about the calculation of ROI of your website and/or other external factors.  Only the last one gives just a passing reference (merely 9% of the respondents) to the web analytics technology one uses to measure the website ROI of their web properties.

Some (possible) Solutions to Overcome the Barriers

Let’s take the above barriers one by one and try to find some viable suggestions on how to clear our path to maximize our website ROI.

Lack of Budget/Resources:

Only use the free web analytics tools as the following.  Once you have effectively proved the worth of any of these tools, you will be in a better position to convince your top management to put aside the financial and other necessary resources to start using, more advanced paid tools.

• Google Analytics
• Yahoo Web Analytics
• Clicky (free version available)
• ClickTale
• BT Buckets

Lack of Strategy

What a funny situation! You don’t have a web strategy,  go away and try to look for another job where you don’t have to use Internet at all.  I am serious what I am saying. The companies which don’t have a clear web strategy are doomed to fail today or tomorrow.  To overcome this barrier, try the following.

1:   Just list up the possible outcomes which you want to see from your website within a certain timeframe

2: List up possible ways to achieve these desired outcomes. If you have no clue what those possible ways could be, just surf the Internet and find free forums where you could throw your question. I am pretty much sure someone might be able to give you some nice suggestions just for free, no kidding.

3:  Appoint a person in your company who happens to have at least some interest in website measurement and ask them to spend at least 10% of their time thinking, researching and creating a website measurement strategy. That could be a one person or a team of enthusiastic people trying to make something out of their time in the company.

Siloed Organization

The best way to solve this issue is to start small, show some value to the stakeholders, share the responsibility of measuring their website ROI to more people and/or units.  You could start from IT and move on to SEO, and marketing and sales units.

Lack of Understanding

The Econsultancy report on website ROI measurement was unclear as to what it meant by Lack of Understanding.  In my opinion, there could be two possible scenarios.

One is that you do not  understand the true value of measuring your website ROI. If that is the case, please read this and other blogs discussing this issue extensively. You will soon start appreciating the true value of an effective website ROI measurement strategy.

The other possible scenario could be that maybe, in your management team, there is a lack of understanding about website ROI.  Ask any of your management team to go attend a webinar or a seminar online  or offline workshop which discusses the importance of an effective website ROI measurement.

Too Much Data

The problem with most of the existing web analytics tools is that they provide too much data which is beyond the comprehension of many marketers.  Most often, we are not sure what our real Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are for our websites.

To handle this issue, select only top three metrics which you and your boss care about the most. The highest priority should be given to the metrics which make the most significant difference in your life as well as in the life of your boss and then his boss. Now just focus on the data which helps you understand the chosen metrics the best way you can and you will be on your way to solving the too much data syndrome.

Lack of Senior Management Buy-in

Did you say that they don’t want to give you the resources and budget to run an effective web analytics report.  Maybe, you were not able to sell your ideas properly due to which their understanding of the importance of web analytics is still poor.

To help you avoid this situation, effectively implement the strategies mentioned in the first point mentioned above and you will be on your way to explaining the importance of website ROI measurement to your boss effectively.

Difficulty Reconciling Data

There is no doubt most of us have difficulty reconciling data from various sources. It’s OK to have discrepency in the data.  In fact,  no two tools will show you the exact same information.  The data collected from these tools should provide you and your management team an indication of the general trends. Your job as a web analyst is to reconcile the data, try to deduce some meaning out of the general patterns and formulate your website ROI strategy.

Lack of Trust in Analytics

There are only two options in this regard.  Either you teach your boss and his boss why having an effective website ROI measurement strategy will help them succeed in their online business or if you can’t do that, just quit your job and look for another one where you can better utilize your time with the people who care more about this than your existing boss does.

Finding Staff:

This is another excuse cited by many marketers as one of the main sources of the problems for their ROI measurement strategy.  Generally speaking, we look for the people who have lots of experience in their relevant fields.  However, for you to be truly successful in the online business, you have to broaden your horizon and actually start hiring even fresh graduates who have knack for web analytics data, have analytical mind and are willing to put their blood and sweat to succeed in whatever they do.

Poor Technology

Come one, give me a break.  Nothing could be further from the truth. Even the free tools like Google Analytics and others will provide you the data sufficient to keep you busy day in and day out.  Technology is evolving real fast. It is your job as a web analyst to keep up with the all the technological developments in your field  and utilize the web analytics tools the best way you can.

I have listed up some barriers to an effective website ROI measurement strategy and some possible solutions to resolve these issues.  Please feel free to comment on these issues to provide further insight on this very important topic of an effective website ROI measurement strategy.

Advertising on your blog or website
You know what your niche is and what topic(s) you are interested in. You have to write lots of posts on various aspects of that topic. Although, there is no official bottom line of the number of posts after which potential customers and sponsors will start noticing you, generally speaking, you will have written around 20 or 30 blog posts before you can start seeing some light.  It is the time when you can expect some related companies contacting you for advertising opportunities on your relevant pages or you may start asking them to do so.

Sponsorships
Affiliated programs
Paid reviews
Freelancing opportunities
Writing Assignments
Blogging consulting
Consulting Opportunities in Your niche
Speaking Engagements

Donations

When you provide value to your website visitors, they will surely be willing to offer you money to continue providing that valuable information.

Can you think of any other ways to make money from your blogging? Plesse sed your feedback in the comments area.

The purpose of this blog is to provide timely and relevant informtion about Japanese search industry to the SEO community and small businesses in Japan and around the world.  So, please stay tuned as we are going to roll out lot of interesting stuff about local search in Japan  in the coming weeks and months.

Measuring the ROI of a Web site

The ROI of a web site can be measured in a number of ways and for a number of factors. A very abstract description of the factors involved in the ROI of a website are as follows.

• Investment on the website

The question to ask here is where it is that you are spending money. In case of a website, following factors could be counted as the money spent on

• Your search engine marketing initiatives including pay per click campaigns etc.
• search engine optimization efforts whether they be in-house or outsourced
• Direct marketing
• web site development costs
• Email Marketing
• Affiliate Programs
• or any other investment you have made to promote your website in one way or the other

• Return from your website

The outputs or outcomes of your investments on the website project could be as follows.

• Conversion
• Revenue generation
• leads
• Customer satisfaction
• Problem resolution rate etc.

Once you have calculated both the investment and outcomes of your website, you can calculate the ROI of your website by dividing the outcomes by the investment. Calculating the ROI seems to be a simple task.  However, the hardest part in the equation is to help your customers identify the outcome they want to see by investing on your web properties. Once that part is determined, it will be an easy shot to calculate the costs involved on the project.

Improving ROI

There could be so many ways of improving the ROI of a website. However, the first and foremost important step in this regard is to gather data of the visitors who visit your website via any free or paid web analytics tool such as Google Analytics, brutally analyze what what the data says and then make recommendations on how to improve your website so that you can achieve your goals from it.

Determine Goals & Expectations

What do want your website to do for you? The reasons could be many as.:

• Get leads for your business
• Generate revenue for the company
• Enhance the branding image of your company
• Provide information to the interested audience

Determine Your Target Audience

You do not create website for yourself. Rather, you always have some target audience behind creating it.  You create it so that others can view and take the actions you want them to take.  For you to be able to fulfill the varying demands of your target users of the website, you have to understand exactly what objectives they want to accomplish by visiting and using your site, what kind of people they are and how they make decisions you want them regarding the website.

What happens once a visitor has clicked on your website?  What if she leaves your website immediately because she could not find what she was looking for on your website or, the navigation was too bad, or the design was too boring or the there was no call to action button. The list could go on and on.

Optimizing your website for improved conversion rates is a worthy goal aiming to understand what your customers want and, actaully help them get what they want. The best course of action for marketers to spend their ever shrinking budgets wisely is to clean up the house before they invite guests.  So, you understand now what you need to do first after you get your next marketing budget aopproved by your boss.

There are two phases of website ROI. Pre-click and post-click. Both SEO and PPC involve improving the visibility of website while conversion optimization entails the overall customer experience- the way customers actually interact with different aspects of your website. Marketers need to prioritize which effort needs to be taken first.