{!date dayname+0}, {!date long+0} Dear {!firstname_fix} How has this week been for you? Busy? Fast? Boring? Gosh, August is almost with us, people are on their hols and before we know it we'll all be doing our Christmas shopping..! Doesn't time fly when you are having fun? I don't like to disillusion you, but even though "the years go by faster than ever" or "last week went so fast" the truth of the matter is last week had 168 hours in it, just the same as the week before and just the same as next week. Whatever your perception of time may be, you actually get the same amount of it as anyone else. It is what you do with that time that makes the difference to how you perceive its passing. Do stuff you enjoy and those 168 hours will
pass rapidly. Do boring stuff and you'll feel you are stuck midway
through the week. If your week has been slow,
it's all down to what you have been doing. Maybe it's time
to analyse your activities to make sure you do more of the interesting things you like - then time will always
fly by for you. And talking of analysis, here's this week's
question...! YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED: What is the best method of analysing website success? Working out how well your website is doing can be tricky. There are lots of different ways you can consider it . For instance, you can think about the traffic you receive. Or you can consider the income you generate. Or you could work out the impact you have on your visitors. There is no right or wrong way to analyse website success. However, there are some things you can do to see the effectiveness of what you do online. The first step is to work out your objectives. What do you want to achieve with your website? Is it a particular level of income? Is it a specific number of readers? Or is it a position in some kind of ranking system? Ultimately, the determinant of success is whether or not you achieve what YOU want. For instance, Google gets around 865m visitors to its website every day. If your measure of success is to get more than Google, you are going to have your work cut out. But do you need that many visitors, or will 865m visitors a decade do you? Where do you need to be in terms of visitor numbers and why? That's what you need to work out first. As an example, imagine you sell products that cost £1m each. You really only need a handful of visitors who can afford such luxury. Chasing large numbers would be fruitless. In this example you would only need a few visitors, but you would need to be sure they were people with a spare £1m in their pockets. In other words, measuring your success online depends upon setting the highly specific objectives you want your website to achieve. Without doing that first, you are merely collecting numbers, charts and graphs. It all looks pretty but is all pretty pointless. Data for data's sake is a worthless exercise; indeed it actually costs you money because you pay for the bandwidth to do it and you spend time looking through the data. So, step one is working out your specific aims and objetives for your website. The next step is to put in place measurement systems which will help you see if you are reaching your targets. The best way to do that is using Clicky . You can set up sophisticated goals and campaigns you want to track. Unlike Google Analytics, you get detailed information about each visitor and you can integrate it with your blog and your RSS feed, resulting in much more comprehensive data analysis. Importantly, though, the best method of analysing website success is simpler than Google Analytics or Clicky. What you need is an ordinary calendar. Mark the starting date of your analysis and enter the total amount of money you generated on your website in the seven days prior to that date. Then repeat that action every week for the next few months. After that, look back over your scribblings. If the number gets bigger each week, your website is working. If the earnings figure stays the same or goes down, you know you need to do something. Often, simple measures are all you need to analyse what is going on with your online business...!. Remember, you can always ask your question and get it answered in this newsletter by going to: http://www.grahamjones.co.uk/questions
WHAT I LEARNED THIS WEEK: Focus on the end result I have an "ideas" file; it is crammed full of stuff. I also use Evernote to track useful information and collect it into stacks of "ideas" which I can work on. And then there's my list of "ideas" I keep in my phone, as well as the batch of "ideas" I have filed away inside my head. Why am I keeping all these lists? Well, to be frank, I have no idea...! I have a long list of websites I "could" be working on. I have more than a couple of dozen "ideas" for books which I "could" be writing. And I have over 40 products I "could" be developing. So why am I not making the progress in all these areas I would like? After all, I do create new websites, write new material and prepare new products. But every time I do that, I look back at my "ideas" list to discover it has grown even longer. No matter how much work I get on with, my ideas list just keeps on growing. But this week I realised what the problem is. Me. I love coming up with ideas - it is exciting to think of new possibilities and to be creative. So, my brain keeps on generating new ideas because it ultimately makes me feel good if I generate ideas. What I need to do is feel good when an idea is executed, not when it is created. No doubt you have heard about the so-called "power of focus". But in reality, it doesn't work. Focusing on one task, or one outcome means you are actually inefficient. You ignore all the other possiblities that could improve or replace the object of your focus. Having the ability to see things in the round, by not being too focused, actually helps. But that leads to the kind of problem I've recognised this week - lack of clarity of purpose. We are geared towards activities for which we get the greatest emotional reward. In my case, that's clearly producing loads of ideas - more ideas than I can cope with. But if I replace the activity-reward link with a new activity, I'll get more done. For instance, instead of the link being between idea generation and emotional reward, all I need is to change the connection so that it is between idea completion and emotional reward. In other words, instead of focusing for focusing sake, I should focus my attention on the end result. That means I can work on loads of ideas, still generate more ideas, but will be likely to achieve more because my mind is focused on results, rather than activity. Sometimes we pay attention to the wrong things - the end game is what should get our maximum attention. And you can do that even without laser-like focus on one specific activity. Just focus on the overall results you want to achieve instead. If you want to check out what else I've been doing for the past week, you can always look at: http://www.grahamjones.co.uk/week
THIS WEEK'S "MUST BUY":
Oxford Papershow Taking notes in meetings is a whole lot easier with the Oxford Papershow. This is a pen which you write with...so far, so good. But you use special paper which allows you to change the colour of the ink you use, the width of the nib and draws perfect straight lines, boxes, circles and so on. As a result you can produce excellent, annotated notes from every meeting. The Papershow pen is a Bluetooth wireless device which communicates with a USB attachment on your computer or latop (Apple Macs included). You simply plug it in, write on the special paper and the notes are saved on your device. You can then print them, even share them with others. You can also display your notes through a projector, providing you with a sophisticated flip chart. You can buy the Oxford Papershow from http://GJurl.com/papershow And if you want to see it in action, look at this short presentation I made using it.
So, that's it for this week - see you in seven days...! Kind Regards
Graham Jones Web: grahamjones.co.uk Tel: +44 118 336 9710 If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter than you can delete your name from the mailing list by clicking this link: {!remove_web} |
