Getting to the Bottom Line: Conversations to help business owners maximize revenue, profit, and cash flow
Whether you're looking to boost your profits or simply gain a clearer understanding what drives business success, "Getting to the Bottom Line" is your ultimate guide to unlocking the strategies and secrets behind sustainable growth and the financial freedom you deserve. Tune in and discover how to turn your business goals into tangible results, one insightful conversation at a time.
Getting to the Bottom Line: Conversations to help business owners maximize revenue, profit, and cash flow
Uncovering Hidden Gems: How Website Analytics Can Boost Your Bottom Line with Philippa Gamse
Step into the world of web analytics with our guest, Philippa Gamse, who brings over 25 years of expertise in digital marketing strategy and analytics. Philippa takes us on a fascinating journey, sharing how businesses can transform raw data into impactful strategies that drive profitability. We explore the nuanced art of optimizing calls to action for better conversions, using tools like Google Analytics to track and enhance user behavior. Philippa's insights reveal how even small adjustments in web content can significantly improve audience engagement and retention, as demonstrated in a compelling case study. Moreover, we confront the underrepresentation of women in tech and champion the importance of empowering female business owners to leverage analytics for their growth.
Throughout the episode, we draw parallels between the customer-focused strategies of giants like Amazon and the adaptive methods small and medium-sized businesses can adopt to refine client engagement. Philippa emphasizes the importance of clear communication and simplifying analytics, ensuring business owners aren't lost in technical jargon. We discuss practical strategies for tracking leads and conversion rates, with anecdotes of businesses turning unexpected traffic into exciting new ventures. This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for anyone eager to harness the fusion of business insight and analytical expertise to foster growth and success.
Connect with Philippa Gamse on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippagamse/
Get the Free eBook: Five Real-World Stories of Analytics-Driven Business Growth at Websites That Win at https://websitesthatwin.com/
We want to hear from you! Send us a message.
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My name is Stephanie Smith, owner of New Light Financial Solutions, and we help business owners walk the one clear path to generating more cash in their business. To learn more, visit us online at https://newlightfs.com/
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Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Getting to the Bottom Line, where I'm your host, stephanie Smith, owner of New Light Financial Solutions, where we help business owners walk the one clear path to generating more cash in their business. And we do this by looking at 16 financial drivers of revenue, profit and cash flow. And while we look at specific drivers, we know that there are things behind these drivers, the drivers of the drivers and other things that impact a business's bottom line, which is why I have this podcast to put into perspective the different things that can impact one's revenue, profit and cash flow. And that all said, I'm excited to have with me today on the show Philippa Games. Thank you so much for joining me today. I am excited to have you here.
Speaker 2:Yes, good morning, stephanie. Great to be here.
Speaker 1:Yes, good morning. Is it not morning here, oh?
Speaker 2:sorry, wherever you are, the wonders of the internet.
Speaker 1:And so I'm going to read your bio. So Philippa has clocked over 25 years in digital marketing strategy and analytics, consulted with nearly 500 clients and worked with websites that have cumulatively generated hundreds of millions of dollars. Owners and marketing executives hire her to find new insights in their web analytics that will grow their business and cut wasted spending, because many are missing those hidden gems. This sounds really awesome. I love analytics. Obviously, I'm in the financial space, but this is really cool, so tell me how you got into doing this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I just want to say for anybody who heard Web Analytics and thought, oh no, this is going to be really boring, I should turn off right now. Hopefully we're going to try and make it interesting and fun, because because it doesn't have to be fun, but it's actually really valuable to your bottom line and you don't have to be a tech geek. We're not going to be talking tech this morning, so I think we should say that so that hopefully people don't glaze over.
Speaker 1:I love that. Keep it simple. We try to do that in art and what we do is really simplify financials. The same thing because numbers you know so many people are like I'm not a numbers person and then that's it.
Speaker 2:They just glaze over everything, but the numbers are important and so, you know, analytics actually been around for a long time and, um, I mean, everybody's heard of google analytics, but there were analytics packages before google, in fact. Um, that's how I got started with somebody who had an amazing analytics tool that was absolutely brilliant. It was called ClickTracks and it was very, very intuitive and easy to understand and, unfortunately, at some point but of course there was a cost of it I actually knew the guy that owned the company and of course you know it's his business you had to pay pay for the tool. And when google came along with a free tool, you know, obviously that was that.
Speaker 2:Um, but, um, you know, it's always fascinated me because there's so much that we can tell from web analytics that we can't tell from other sort of marketing data in the quote real world. I mean, if you think about a newspaper or a magazine, you, if you want to advertise in that newspaper or magazine, right, they can tell you what the circulation is, they can tell you how many issues they sold, but they can't tell you how many people who bought that magazine or newspaper actually read your article or your ad or whatever. And they certainly can't. You can't correlate how many people responded to that? And they certainly can't. You can't correlate how many people responded to that, um, and so you know what web analytics can tell us some of that, quite a lot of that, depending on you know what, what exactly we want to know, and so from that perspective, it's very interesting because it's so much more detailed and we can learn so much more, and, and so the the potential of that really intrigued me and I. That's how I got into analytics as part of strategy, because I'm sure as we'll talk, you'll hear that for me, the numbers are meaningless unless you're going to do something with them which goes to your strategy.
Speaker 2:The other thing that really got me involved is that I think this is actually, unfortunately, still true there are far more men in this field than women. Um, you know, women in technology is still a sort of you know, I mean, I've I've walked into rooms that I'm speaking in front of, you know ceo groups or whatever, and I faced a room full of men and I'm the only woman in it. I'm sure you might have encountered these situations too, and if you know, one guy walked into a room of women, he'd probably be like what's going on, unless, obviously, it was a woman's group. But most people don't see that in the technology field, don't see that as weird still. So I'm also on a mission to empower women business owners to understand this as well.
Speaker 1:I love that. I think definitely we need more women in the field and I think it's growing.
Speaker 1:I feel like we'll get there, yeah, yeah, it's definitely but it starts with the spark of interest and what you want to do, and so I love what. I love what you're all about and what you're trying to do, especially because you mentioned it doesn't matter if you have the numbers and the analytics, if you're not going to do anything with them. So I think that's I heard that that was a takeaway for me, because it's true, what's the point of tracking if you, if you're not going to make decisions off of it? So that's on my side too. In the financial space is the same way Like we're going to track and we're going to make decisions based on that. So I love that. So tell us about what you actually do.
Speaker 2:So that's, that is kind of what I actually do. So I'm I'm somebody who who can help businesses to really improve their digital presence so that you make more money, you grow your target markets and, hopefully, you stop wasting money on stuff that isn't working for you. And in order to do that, I use web analytics and I help you. But then my main goal is to actually take that and go to strategy and say, okay, what does this mean? And therefore, what are we going to do about it? So, for example, are you getting enough of the right traffic? You know there's a.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of people who look at what we call vanity metrics, which is basically stuff like did we get more of X than we did last week? And that could be, that could be visitors. But the mere fact that you got more visitors than you did last week or last month or whatever it is, isn't necessarily good, because if they were the wrong kind of visitors that are never going to buy anything from you, it doesn't matter how many of those you get, you're never going to make any money, right? So I always look at the numbers and then it's like okay, so what? What can we learn from this? Does this matter, and I also help people to really hone in on what do you really want to know, because the data is completely overwhelming.
Speaker 2:I mean, I started by saying, you know, don't turn off, because this isn't going to be a tech session, and I know that when I speak about analytics, a lot of people are very concerned because they look at their. If they go into their Google Analytics, right, they just see a load of charts, a load of numbers, and there's masses of it. This. You know where do I start? What do I do with this? And it's very easy to to back out quickly, because you know it's not fun if you, if you feel overwhelmed and if you feel confused, um, and the answer is I'm in and say that was me I log into my google analytics and I'm just like I don't even know where to begin.
Speaker 1:So right.
Speaker 2:But the answer to that is to go back to this thing that we're saying, that you know there's no point in just measuring for the sake of it. The question is what do you need to know? So my favorite question that a business owner will ask me, or a decision maker, whoever is working with me, is exactly that, philippa what do I need to know to run my business better? And that means we're not going to look at every single number. We're going to look at a few important numbers for your business, specifically today, that you can take action on, so we can prioritize and we can get in on what's important. For example, I don't want to pick on social media, but let's pick on social media.
Speaker 2:You know, a lot of people spend money on social media advertising because it tends to be a cheaper than google, paid ads and so on. Um, and they see the traffic coming in and, especially if you know, you get the reports from the social media platform and it will say this number of click-throughs and so they think it must be working. And if you look at your analytics, like Google Analytics, the thing is you can see what those visitors then do and I can tell you and I, as I say, I don't. Every situation is different, so I'm not saying that all social media advertising is a waste of money. Different, so I'm not saying that all social media advertising is a waste of money, but you can certainly see typically a lot of social media visitors leaving very, very quickly which is frankly, a waste of money.
Speaker 2:And then, and the answer, the reason for that, presumably, is because people typically aren't on social media because they're looking for solutions to their problems right, that would be more like a search engine. They're on social media because they're talking to their problems right, that would be more like a search engine. They're on social media because they're talking to their friends and relatives. They're watching silly videos, right?
Speaker 1:They saw an interesting ad or video of you or whatever you're selling, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you know the ad catches their eye. They click on it, you know, but it's really not something that they're interested in doing today and so a lot of times the question is is this advertising worth the spend, or would we be better off spending that money on something else?
Speaker 1:It's a very good question. What kinds of things do you help people look at initially, what are those?
Speaker 2:metrics. So, initially, what we do is to say really in depth, what is your site about? Why do you have a website? What are you trying to do here? And obviously, the key answer is making money. If you have a site that directly sells things, you want to be selling those things. If you have a site that is essentially a lead generation site, you want somebody to contact you or you want somebody to join your mailing list. You know what are all the things that you want people to do while they're on your website. And so one of the first questions is are those things happening? And if not, why not? Right?
Speaker 2:I mean, for example, a lot of times, if people have a longer page of content example, a lot of times, if people have a longer page of content, they tend to have their call to action, which is the do this now bit, at the end of the page. Now, if the page is long, then with analytics, to some extent customized so with Google Analytics, there's a lot of customization you can do, which is really powerful. You can see how far down the page people scroll. That's cool, and that tells you, therefore, how many people actually if your call to action is way at the bottom of the page, and that's the only one there that tells you how many people actually even saw that call to action Right. And I can also tell you that, based on my experience, you have to tell people what to do. You have to tell people what to do next, because if you leave it to them to work it out, a lot of them won't do what you, the site owner, want them to do. They'll go somewhere else, they'll leave, you know whatever. And so those calls to action are really key, and there's nothing wrong with having one at the bottom of the page. But if you see that people typically don't get to the end of the page, you want calls to action further up. There's nothing wrong with having more than one right. So that's one example.
Speaker 2:What are you trying to do here and is that working? And if not, can we tease out some places where it's not working? Shopping carts is another one. I mean, if you are selling things on your site, it's still quite common for people to look at all your stuff and then not buy it. And the question there is is there a, is there a clue, um, about why they're not buying it? Do they? Do they start to, to check out and then see the shipping charges and drop off right, for example, um, and then, having done that, then we can progress into well, what else can we do? What can we do to get better? So, for example, if you have a lot of content on your site and so you have a podcast, right, so presumably you've got tons of content, I have put my podcast on the website.
Speaker 1:That was actually a recent change based on my last, one of my last podcast guests in the space, so yes, um, you know, for content.
Speaker 2:so, for example, um, podcast videos, anything like that um, a lot of people don't realize this. We can actually see how much of that podcast or that or that video they actually watched really, and that's much more in-depth information than, for example, if you look at YouTube and you look at a video thumbnail as a member of the public so not the site owner but just the viewer it will say X number of views of this video, right, right, but that statistic, I believe that number counts. I think it's something like 30 seconds. So if somebody's viewed the video for 30 seconds it will count them, but if your video is five minutes long, that doesn't tell you how many people stopped watching at 31 seconds, right, right, and typically a lot of people drop off. And again, that's really helpful information to know around how you structure your content.
Speaker 1:So you're saying you can find that using Google Analytics?
Speaker 2:You can, yes, interesting, and for the podcast and so on. Yes, I mean, for example, I had a client who is prolific. He makes so many videos, he interviews people, he does all sorts of stuff, right. But he was starting every single video with hello, my name is, and I've done this and I've done that, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And once you've heard it, you've heard it right, and his stuff is really good.
Speaker 2:But when we looked at the analytics, I mean, he was losing 50 50 of his viewers by 30 seconds and 90 by one minute. Wow, that's ridiculous, right, because it's actually pretty good content. Um, but without having that insight, you wouldn't know that. And I said to him look, you've got to start the video by giving people a really compelling reason to listen. I mean, you've got to get rid of all this blah, blah, blah and just, you know, hi, this is what we're going to do. This is why you need to listen to this. You know, here's something that's going to be great at the end, so that will keep you listening that kind of stuff, right, but it sounds gimmicky, but it works and it's important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense and I love that you. It takes you to the strategy, right. So I imagine that you're doing this kind of consulting work. You've seen so many different situations and scenarios and gone back to people's websites and their content and stuff and seen so many things that are worth changing. I'd love to know, like, what's, what's the most common thing? I know you talked about the, the front home page, and maybe that's it, um, but the most common issue that you see that, if you change, would result in better metrics what is that?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean the call to action honestly is really important. Like I said, people don't do often of their own accord what you want them to do, so you really have to move people through the paths that you want them to go to and having multiple calls to action. If you think about Amazon okay, we're talking mostly to small, I work mostly with small and medium-sized businesses and obviously Amazon isn't that but if you think about when you look at an Amazon product so if you think about when you look at an Amazon product, right at the top of the screen there's a buy this now like easy one click, get this done, right, right, which Amazon, I think, pioneered and now a lot of other people do that. But it was really clever because you know, if you know what you want, you don't need to mess about Right.
Speaker 1:So so give me what I need very quickly, right you?
Speaker 2:don't need to mess about, right, so. So give me what I need very quickly, right Makes sense. So that that's definitely one. And just just really being clear about who you are, what you do, what you offer. So that, and and then being engaging, so you know, talking language that people will understand. I mean, you're a financial person, right? So I talk about, in my world, people glaze over when you say analytics, I know, and I hate to tell you this I glaze over when people say finances. I mean, obviously I want to make money.
Speaker 2:But I remember, many years ago, I was actually sitting with my accountant and he was trying to reconcile my taxes and for some reason he couldn't, and he's. We sat there about 10 minutes and then he finally said, ah right, got it. And got all excited Cause everything was, you know, just perfect. Suddenly he'd figured out what it was and he said would you like to know what I found? And I said, no, no, just tell me what I need. If I do, I need to pay anything, or you know where do I sign it?
Speaker 1:just make it happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, go away, right yeah, and and you know, I I understand that for a lot of people, analytics is a similar thing, but so what I'm trying to convey is, just like you would be trying to convey, that you don't have to do it yourself. You know, you can hire somebody very competent to do it for you, but, as the business owner, you need to understand enough to know that the person that you're working with knows what they're doing, is giving you good advice. You need to know some of the questions that you should be well, the questions that you should be asking right so that you should be well, the questions that you should be asking right so that, so that you're steering them on the right track.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. I want to follow up. I have a couple questions, but want to follow up with um. How do you make it, simplify it for people? What do you do?
Speaker 2:well, I think what I try to do with that is not blinding.
Speaker 2:With technology, I mean, we really haven't talked about any.
Speaker 2:We haven't used any technical terms in this conversation so far, right, right, because you don't care what a custom dimension is right and you shouldn't have to care.
Speaker 2:So what I try to do, as we've been doing, is to say, look, we need to talk about your business because that's what I don't know about. I don't know what you're trying to do in detail in the same way that you do. I don't know who your audience is in the same way that you do. That's what I want to hear about from you, so that we can make a team to get the best results, because you know you're always going to know more about your business and your markets than I will. Right, and so if we have that conversation where I say, as I said, what are you trying to do? What's working? What are you aware of that? Maybe you'd like to have more of that's how we approach it, or I approach it with clients, and then I can go away and look at all the numbers and come back and say, look, this is what I'm seeing, this is what I recommend.
Speaker 1:I assume you would ask, because I think to myself you were to come to. I know two of the two of the drivers we look at are leads and conversion rate and part of that is track, like tracking those things. Right, we're talking about analytics and sometimes the answer is like I don't, I don't even know how to do that, or maybe they don't even have a Google Analytics account or someone else set it up for them. So I assume that you would go and find the numbers for them.
Speaker 2:Right, and you know, sometimes, if you want, for example, now you can create ongoing reports, right, so that people like me can set up a report that would then continue to populate if you want a weekly report or a monthly report or whatever of the things that are important to you. And again, you know, I don't ever have a client coming to me and saying I want 50 pages of reports. Right, who does who does? Because what you want is the answers to those key questions that you need to know. But then the question is, you know, are you getting enough leads? Are you getting the right quality leads?
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm actually in the process of writing a new book which is all about. It's designed for business owners to understand this in english without the techie stuff, and I have all sorts of stories in there from my experience, um, of this kind of thing, and so you know thinking about um examples where the traffic that we're attracting for various reasons is basically wrong traffic. And so, for example, one that could be common is where a B2B company does very, very well in search and then attracts a load of consumers. Now, they don't sell to consumers, they don't sell, they only do retail. Sorry, wholesale right.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but in fact, for a couple of my clients, we've actually gone ahead and created a consumer business, a separate little consumer e-commerce area or something like that, where, since we're getting all these people, we can do something with them. So that's then. The next stage is saying what else can we learn?
Speaker 1:Are there additional opportunities?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Right, and this is where it gets creative, which I really love.
Speaker 2:So you, you know, are there additional opportunities that we can see based on what we now know is happening with our website? Um, if you have a lot of content, your internal site search the site searches on your site, which is really important so that people can get through your content. That can be really valuable because it tells you what people expect to find from you. And sometimes in there and again, I've got stories in my book about people, about ideas that we've had based on people's searches, because if it's in with within your area of expertise, you could have a you know a frequently asked questions. Ask the finance expert, right, right, and start seeing the kinds of questions that people ask you, and I've I've had clients who who've created information products based on that. You know ebooks, manuals that you can sell online, because it's basically a pdf that somebody pays for, but based on what they can see is clear demand from people coming to the site to say I think you, you know about this, tell me what I need to know, right.
Speaker 1:Right. So I love this conversation because talking about getting to the bottom line, right things that impact your revenue, profit, cash flow, finding the right traffic obviously, bringing the right people who are ready to buy from you makes a big difference, but I love that you take, you go kind of the extra mile of like, if you have the traffic or they're looking for something, why not give them what they're looking for, which could definitely make improvements to your cash flow, your bottom line? And maybe it wasn't where you were looking or what you were expecting, but you had the traffic there, so it makes sense to do it. But if you didn't ever track, you would never have known that to begin with.
Speaker 2:Right. And also, just literally, your site search is a goldmine. If you have content on your site, get a site search engine, because it also tells you the words that people use to describe what they think you have. And again, especially industries where there's a load of techie terms, that's really important because the question is do your buyers understand your jargon? You're in, every industry has its jargon right, right, um and if, but? If your buyers don't understand that jargon and they don't know how to use those words and your content is using the words that you know, then you're going to have a disconnect between you and your visitors. So there's, there's all sorts of ways that you can get this information and then mine it to optimize what you're doing.
Speaker 1:Well then you take that information and use that as part of your content strategy, of whatever it is, to bring those people looking for those things back to your website. So full circle. I love it All right. This has been a really great conversation and I think it's really important. I always say it's starting to track, is a good place, right, like we got to start somewhere. But I would love to know if you, if everyone listening, if there was just one takeaway that you had for them based on all this, what would it be?
Speaker 2:Honestly, don't get overwhelmed, right. Don't try to measure everything you can possibly measure. Figure out, say, three key questions that you have right now. Is this working? If not, why not? Are we getting enough of what we want in this area? If not, why not Just really focus in on what would be helpful for you to know that you can do something about that you're likely to do something about right. So, um, and you know people like, well, there are lots of, I mean okay, if, if you want, for example, I offer a one-hour consulting call, right, you don't have to pay thousands of dollars, um, to get something, to get some starting ideas. You know, if you need some expert help to get you started, then use it. Because if you aren't using your analytics, if you aren't making really the use of what those analysts can tell you, and you do have a website that plays a role in your business, then you're shooting in the dark with everything that you're doing, and that is the real, honest truth.
Speaker 1:I love that and I feel like for me after this conversation is you know, just because you have traffic doesn't mean it's the right traffic. And I really love the fact that you can make really strategic business decisions based on the data if you have the data and you know what it means and make sense of it. So I love that so much. And I know you mentioned your one hour consultation, but if somebody wanted to work with you or find out more about you or connect with you, where can they find you at?
Speaker 2:So certainly, linkedin is actually my favorite place to find people, and I think I'm the only person in the entire world with my name, so it's easy to find me on LinkedIn. My website is called Websites that Win, and on my website there is a free ebook which has five stories of the kind that we've been talking about here. That's designed to inspire people. Five stories, real world stories from my experience with clients of things that we found in analytics that we would never otherwise have known and ways that we changed the business significantly or the website, based on those insights. And it's all in English. There's no graphs or pie charts, but it's, you know, it's designed to produce some sort of inspiration, like hopefully somebody might read it and go hmm, I wonder if that might be our situation, right?
Speaker 1:I love that, so everyone needs to go connect with you and download your ebook. I think I'm going to go do it myself because I'll send you a copy.
Speaker 2:Then you send me a copy, as with almost every podcast guest that I've had is.
Speaker 1:I feel like it's also important stuff that we could use in our business to help us grow and do better, and I I really appreciate you coming on the show. I want to say, if anyone who wants to learn more about me and what we do, you can find me online at newlightfscom. But that's all the time that we have for this episode. I want to thank you again for coming on the show. This was such a great conversation.
Speaker 2:Thank you, that was great, great, fun, fun yes, everyone should start tracking all their analytics.
Speaker 1:Not all their analytics start somewhere, um, and it's such useful information to grow and run your business with. But, um, thanks again, everyone. That's all for this episode of getting to the bottom line. I hope you join me again next time. Bye.
