The Karcher Group-Changing the 'They'll Call if They're Interested' Mentality

The Karcher Group (www.thekarchergroup.com) is a full-service web company, taking clients from idea to design to maintenance.

Before ClickTracks

Because of the nature of their business, Matt Bailey and his colleagues were constantly evaluating different products for stats and log analysis…and were constantly being disappointed. ' Log file analysis took hours to perform, but that wasn't the only problem. The value of the analysis was difficult to sell and explain to clients. We could offer them several pages of textual reports, but many of our clients didn't know how to interpret them, even after we explained their meaning.'

'For our own site, we were initially concerned about giving our visitors too much information,' notes Matt. 'We felt that we'd use our web site to pique their interest, and then we'd close the sale by getting them to give us a call and find out the rest of the story. We were getting a few conversions, but our conversion rate wasn't where we wanted it to be.'

Matt tried out ClickTracks on The Karcher Group web site, and found something he wasn't expecting. 'ClickTracks very quickly revealed that people were looking for more information. They were browsing the "quick hit" information and then leaving.'

After ClickTracks

'Our 'if we build it they will come' mentality has changed since we started using ClickTracks,' Matt admits. 'By looking at our own site, and our client's sites, we were able to uncover a major trend that was almost invisible to us before. ClickTracks showed us that people are actively seeking information and that they to judge a company's expertise by the amount of information they share. In other words, the more we share of what we know, the more potential customers realize that we know what we're doing. Once customers feel comfortable that we know what we're doing, then they call. As a result of implementing changes in content and navigation not only on our own site, but on client sites, we've seen conversion rates increase anywhere from 10%-200%.'

' We're able to not only track the effectiveness of our targeted keywords--measuring the effectiveness of each key phrase and the ease or difficulty a visitor has of reaching the destination--but also are able to track ROI on natural optimization campaigns. By tracking natural keyword ranking referrals and the sales or leads generated by those referrals, we are able to ascertain ROI for the natural optimization campaigns, comparing them against other efforts,' said Matt. 'ClickTracks also helps us make decisions about site usability and navigation-the keys to web site conversion.

By constantly measuring how users navigate the website, we can easily see what improvements need to be made.' Has ClickTracks helped The Karcher Group in any other way? Every day. 'Our ClickTracks analysis changed how we design websites--almost overnight. We found evidence of consistent user behavior on a homepage and it was immediately integrated into our designs. We are now approaching all of the clients in our web marketing program to change their homepage with the new focus. When they see the ClickTracks report and the results of making a change - they know it is the best thing to do without question,' said Matt.

'The speed of the program is incredible. Analysis that took hours to perform in the past was readily available to me in a matter of minutes. We can now offer a much more extensive level of analysis in the same amount of time,' explains Matt. 'This is revolutionary. We've used ClickTracks to measure visitor behavior from multiple homepages, and have found consistent trends. We were able to implement these findings and see immediate results.'

The Karcher Group currently offers Search Engine Seminars to clients, potential clients and businesses in Northeast Ohio. A large part of the seminar shows the information one is able to glean from a ClickTracks log file analysis. 'When we first show product screen shots, it always stirs a reaction among our guests-they can't believe the amount of information that they're missing by not evaluating their log files. Overwhelmingly, it is seeing the information in ClickTracks' visual interface that makes them excited to know more. It is obvious that seeing the information in this manner is more easily understood and retained than any other type of reporting. The visual evidence of increased effectiveness creates such a powerful impact that clients are allocating extra spending in their budgets just to have this analysis on a monthly basis. '

'Spending 10 minutes with a client showing them a ClickTracks report will replace 45 minutes of us presenting the same information in a written report, and the client will remember the ClickTracks report long afterwards,' concludes Matt.