Do you know what Growth Hacking is?
When I say to my client’s that my services beyond building their website include Growth Hacking, they have no idea what that means, do you?
Growth Hacking is where you make small changes (hacks) to your website based on some kind of data (usually analytics). Over time your website will become tuned towards your customer’s experience/needs and result in growth.
Most sme’s do not do this, usually because they don’t understand what to do. I do, I use analytical data to understand the behavior of your visitors and I am able to make recommendations and implement them. I can then prove how this benefits your website using the same analytical data.
When you consider the paper trail of the Growth Hacking process and the results that can be proven, it’s a no-brainer. However, most companies don’t mind spending thousands £’s on advertising with companies like Yell who do not give you the same data (or results). So why pay for a Yell advert and wait for the phone to ring when you can work efficiently and effectively (like a Formula One team) proving everything along the way (and get results)?
The point to take away here is that Growth Hacking is very important, make no mistake your competitor’s are doing it. My theory is that the data is not readily available in a format that is easy to convert into actionable tasks. In addition, the tools needed to analyse data and work out which updates should be done is a specialist game. So where does that leave you?
Become a Growth Hacker in 10 minutes
Google has launched a service called Grow My Store and the service is all about… you guessed it, growing your store! The way it works is that it will scan your website and make recommendations to make your store better and also highlight areas that you are performing well at. You can then action the recommendations or get your web designer to do them.
Does this sound familiar? Yes, it’s Growth Hacking (well done)! Google has made Growth Hacking really simple and easy for you to do. Don’t get me wrong this is not a replacement for (proper) Growth Hacking but it does give YOU the business owner or your web designer a great insight as to how Google sees your store and more importantly how Google compares you to your competitors.
The steps are easy; simply enter your website address, select a few options like whether you are a website or a store (or both), complete a small sign up form then hey-presto! So in the 10 minutes it takes to sign up and generate a report, you become a Growth hacker, well not quite but you almost.
The benefits of using Grow My Store
The benefits of using Grow My Store are easy to understand, but to be clear, they are;
- Your customers will get a better experience
- Sales will increase both on your website and in your shop (if you have one)
- Traffic going to all your stores will increase
- Your website rank will get better
If you have had your coffee this morning you would have already picked up on the last item on my list, SEO! Yes by using the Grow My Store recommendations you will get a better Google rank. How? A lot of the items that Google will highlight will also be on the same list of SEO tasks that an SEO expert will do. Pagespeed for example is a ranking factor as well as a user experience issue.
I recommend that you use Grow My Business
Google has made things really easy for you to scan your website and generate a report with easy to understand, actionable improvements. You should make use of this service because it will highlight what Google thinks about your business. If the recommendations are beyond your understanding, you can pass them onto your web designer, the rest you can do yourself.
You could simply give this to your web designer to do. If they do not do any SEO or Growth Hacking, a really good place to start would be for them to get the report and provide a quote based on the Google recommendations, its a win-win (Growth Hacking and SEO).