With other forms of advertising it is difficult to track the exact effectiveness of it. If you place an advert in a newspaper then you may have an increased number of calls but you do not know how many people looked at your advert or the percentage that called you. With a website you can get a lot more information.
We would advise all of our clients to add Google analytics into their website in order to track their visitors. This will enable them to make changes to their website in order to increase the effectiveness of their website. The key points that will help you with your website are below:
1. Traffic Sources
You can see the websites that your visitors are coming from and also the page from a particular website. In addition you can see the search engines that are referring people to you and the keywords that they are using to find you.
2. Bounce Rate
This shows you the percentage of people that come to your site and lead immediately. You should always aim for a bounce rate of less than 50% and so this should be monitored. The one advantage to this is that you can check the bounce rate per referring site, search engine and keyword. This will really help you to see which referring sites are working for you. If you find you have an advert on your site and the bounce rate is 80% you will know that you are not giving people what they want. In order to change this there may be things you need to change on your website or change the advert to attract different visitors. However it may also tell you that an advert on that website is not right and so you can stop it, save some money and place an advert elsewhere.
3. Pages Visited
You can see how long people spend on your site and the path they take while they are there. Once you have an idea of where people are going you can target them more directly. This also shows you where your visitors are leaving. If you have a page where a huge percentage of people are leaving then that will tell you need to make changes to stop people leaving and increase your sales.
4. Conversions
You can set up your Google analytics to track the conversions that you make and you can determine what a conversion is. So it could be people filling out a contact form or someone signing up for a newsletter, or downloading a document. Whatever it is you can track it. The aim is to get as high a percentage of visitors to a conversion and by monitoring the rest of the analytics you can change things to increase this number.
If you have a website and are not using analytics then you are shooting in the dark. Why would you do that when you can add a programme for free and see exactly what your potential customers are doing.
Invoice factoring can be utilized when you've refused a job or an order because your business didn't have enough capital to purchase the supplies or hire the extra staff. You build a good reputation, have good workers and then when you finally get a nice big contract, you have to turn it down because all your money is tied up in accounts receivables. You know the bills will be paid, but they aren't due quite yet so you are the one who suffers because of cash flow problems.
If you have customers who are established, are good credit risks and almost always pay on time, you can sell those invoices to an investor (a factor). Factoring will give you an advance of 70% to 90% when the invoice is issued and will wait for the bill to be paid. Then you will get the rest of the money minus a small fee of 2% to 4% per month. The advance and fee depend on monthly volume, size of invoice, credit, time it takes to be paid and other variables.
Some business people are under the impression that the advance of 70% to 90% is all they get. They are thrilled when they discover they get the rest when the bill is paid except for the small fee. So they actually get 96% to 98% of their invoice.
Factoring isn't a loan, nor is it a credit line. There are no debts to pay back and you don't have to tie up any assets other than the customer's invoices. It only takes a few days to get approved and you keep complete control of your company.
Almost any business can use factoring, as long as they have invoices that are issued to another business. Even a business in Chapter 11 can have their receivables factored. Different factors have different requirements, minimums, maximums, fees, rates and applications to fill out. Some have a small application fee, many do not.
There are factors who work with any industry except construction and medical. There are others who specialize in construction contractors and others in medical receivables. These two have specific rules and regulations and risks and you definitely want a factor who specializes in them.
A good broker will be working with several factors and should be able to find the best factoring company for you. The broker will work for you, will get your questions answered and will be able to go to a second factor if the first one doesn't fit your needs. The broker gets paid directly by the factor and your rates and fees are not affected.
Quite often business people think of using factoring as a last resort when their business is struggling and they are trying to survive. In reality, businesses should consider a factor when they are starting out, so they can keep their business growing. They should definitely use a factor when they are feeling confident about their business and are ready for growth.
Your customers will simply have a different address to send the payment to; they still do the work for you, get the invoice from you and have the same payment terms as they always do.
Just think how your business could grow if you were paid most of each invoice when you issue it: you could get discounts when you buy your supplies if you pay cash, you could do more marketing, hire more staff, buy more equipment, increase your own credit rating. Instead of focusing on collecting the payments you could concentrate on going after more contracts.
The next time a customer calls you with a big contract, you just have to get the papers signed and get on with the work. Sounds good, doesn't it?
Both Mercedes Aspland & Kent Harlan are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Mercedes Aspland has sinced written about articles on various topics from Web Development, Forums and Home Management. If you have found this article useful then you can get more information from Dazines - , London UK.Dazines -. Mercedes Aspland's top article generates over 368000 views. to your Favourites.
Kent Harlan has sinced written about articles on various topics from Business Loans, Business and Finance and Business and Finance. Kent Harlan has been a CPA since 1984 and is the owner of Ozarks Capital Funding, a firm offering financing in the areas of accounts receivable factoring,. Kent Harlan's top article generates over 9900 views. to your Favourites.