You’re probably on this page because you match one of the following:
Here we lift the lid on the following …
How to measure return on investment from Applegate
Why your business will gain more by spending budget on A1WebStats or elsewhere
First of all, here’s the summary of everything else you’ll see on this page …
Having a company listing on Applegate should be converting to enquiries for you.
What Applegate tell you about your data is not necessarily the full picture.
There are significantly more beneficial (than a listing on Applegate) ways to gain more business via your website.
The nature of our software product (A1WebStats) is that it tracks all visitors to websites (in a way that’s much stronger, but easier to understand, than Google Analytics).
Included in that is the ability to see which companies went to your website and what they looked at page by page.
That’s why most companies initially come to us (for a free 30 day trial).
And then we show them what matters more than identifying visiting companies – what overall return on investment those companies are gaining from their website visitors.
That includes what they gain from online directories such as Applegate.
We speak to a LOT (thousands) of businesses each year and so we’ve built up a strong picture of what those businesses gain from all forms of marketing & advertising (Google Adwords, email marketing, online directories, social media, and more). In short, there are few, if any, businesses that have a greater insight into what UK businesses are or aren’t gaining from their website visitors.
That’s why we feel we’ve got the credibility to share our findings about Applegate with you.
There’s a very old but still valid quote:
Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half.
Most businesses use a range of advertising, see enquiries and sales come in to the business, but don’t necessarily know (or care) which forms of advertising got results (and which didn’t).
The reality is that most businesses are simply ‘too busy’ to help themselves by digging deeper into the return on investment they do or don’t get.
Businesses such as Applegate benefit from such apathy, which is why many advertisers keep paying year after year.
Most businesses will believe what Applegate tell/show them. It’ll typically involve data related to:
Applegate will imply that because lots of people have viewed the company listing page on their directory, it must translate into various enquiries that have been gained.
Few businesses will spend the time to dig deeper.
But they should do.
Whether it’s Applegate or any other form of advertising, all businesses should ideally be doing the following:
For example, the image below (taken from our A1WebStats software) shows someone who got to the enquiry-thanks page at 22:13 on 27th March. It also shows that the enquiry came from Google Ads and the keyword used was ‘bottles capping machine’ …
The company then knows that the enquiry they gained on that date/time came from Google Ads advertising, so they know they’re getting a return on investment.
If someone rang that company on a date and time, or emailed them, they could link the enquiry back to the source in a similar way.
Here’s a view of numbers of visitors to a website who clicked through from their company listing on Applegate …
That sample is taken over a period of nearly 4 months.
As you can see, not a lot of clicks from Applegate directory in that long time period!
We can go further than that – you can see what those people looked at after clicking through from Applegate, as you can see in this example below …
Unfortunately, most people who click from Applegate (or any online directory, to be honest) go no further than the landing page, as in this example below …
If you tracked such data (which you can do via the A1WebStats system) and shared that with Applegate, you would get a variety of responses from them, including words to the effect of:
Taking point 1 above, if you routinely ask enquirers how they found out about you, then ‘Applegate’ should be recorded IF those people had found you via that source. We’ve taken businesses through that process and can see the positive change that happens when businesses have a stronger view of how their enquirers found them.
Taking point 2, that’s a fair observation – unfortunately, many websites are not strong enough (which is something else that the A1WebStats system can help with).
Point 3 is something to take with a large pinch of salt. Here’s why …
Applegate think of themselves as a destination for businesses looking for products or services.
Think of some keyword phrases that you would like to be visible under in Google (for example a product or service that you offer).
Type those into Google.
Look through the search results.
Do you see any Applegate directory listings prominently in there?
Probably not.
Which raises the question: what brings all these potential buyers to Applegate in the first place?
Our research indicates that it’s certainly not through prominent visibility in Google.
That raises another question: if Applegate have data showing numbers of people going to your company listing page(s), then what’s taken those people to their website/your listing in the first place?
You do have to question whether businesses actively searching for products/services instantly think “I’ll go to Applegate”.
They’re more likely to think “I’ll go to Google”.
And if your listing on Applegate is not prominent in Google, then why is it that Applegate are not able to achieve that? There are reasons: please feel free to contact us if it’s of interest to you.
Try to link back all incoming enquiries to their sources (including Applegate). Intelligent analytics software like ours will help you do that.
Watch out for clicks from Applegate visitors who click through to your website, and what pages those people do (or don’t) move onto after landing.
Ask yourself: what business is actually gained from my Applegate listing?
Having focused on what return on investment you get from Applegate, it’s worth looking at how to gain substantially more results from your website visitors (overall, not just via Applegate) …
Having analysed what you do or don’t gain from an Applegate listing of your business, we’ve hopefully focused you on what’s most important: gaining MORE business from your website.
Yes, what follows all refers to our own product (A1WebStats).
Yes, it’s easy to get a free 30 day trial and then super easy to get a quick return on investment if deciding to continue afterwards (over 95% of our customers pay from £30-50 per month, with no contract).
No, you never get a sales pitch during a free trial. We’re a UK business dedicated to helping small to medium-sized businesses (in the UK and worldwide) to gain significantly higher results from their websites for minimal cost. Our free trial is there purely to show where the opportunities are and you’re guaranteed to get no form of sales pitch from us.
Here’s a summary of why businesses trial/buy A1WebStats …
You can see the names of identifiable companies that visit your website, including what they looked at page by page.
If those companies didn’t make contact with you then you have the option to reach out to them to see if you can salvage something from their visit to you.
There must have been reasons that they didn’t make contact (see the next section for how to get help with this).
Here’s an example of an identifiable company that has been to a website and what they looked at page by page …
It shows the name of the company, what keywords they used to find the website in Google, and what they looked at page by page.
And here’s a video that explains about what you can do with the information about visiting companies, including sharing that within your business and creating filtered reports that focus on very specific types of website movement patterns by companies …
It’s useful to see companies that visited your website, but many companies still can’t be identified.
There will be many visitors to your website that will look at your product or service pages (and so appear to be genuinely interested visitors) but because of where they’re located or the way they access the internet, they can’t be identified by company name.
For example, this visitor below can’t be identified but they looked at important website pages. You can see that they visited the website during an evening and so were probably at home (when many people do their research) …
Where the A1WebStats system helps is to let you focus on products or services that you want more enquiries about and then dig deeper into the visitors who got to those parts of your website.
From that, along with some free input from our helpful and knowledgeable team, it’ll become clear where your website can be strengthened so that more of those visitors decide to actively make contact with you about those products or services.
Here’s a video that summarises how you can use A1WebStats to gain more enquiries about products or services …
This page is all about Applegate and you’ve already seen that it’s easy to see visitors from that directory, so that you can determine what value (or not) that gave you.
But marketing covers many other areas, all of which can be tracked via the A1WebStats system. Here are some examples …
Here’s a video that summarises how you can use A1WebStats to measure return on investment from your marketing …
Should you continue with Applegate, ditch it, try A1WebStats, or do nothing?
This should help …
Applegate advertising varies in cost depending on who you are and what level of listing you have.
If paying for Applegate, you should ideally be able to link that cost to what you gain back from it.
If you’re not actively tracking what you gain from Applegate then you won’t have a clear picture of what it is or isn’t achieving for you.
A1WebStats (after a free 30 day trial) costs £30-50 (+ VAT) per month. It’s the same price for everyone (as long as you have under 3,000 website visitors per month).
If trialling A1WebStats, we’re looking to find ways to get you a fast return on investment so that the system covers its costs for many months into the future.
A1WebStats should not be seen as a cost but as a useful business investment that repays itself over and over.
It is impossible NOT to gain return on investment if using the functionality within the system.
Whether it’s following up on companies that visited your website …
… or identifying paid advertising cost wastage and saving budget as a result …
… or gaining a deeper understanding of where the website itself if underperforming (which leads to more incoming enquiries once such problems are fixed) …
… A1WebStats provides a very easy way to gain return on investment as quickly as possible.
The great news is that there’s no cost to you. The 30 day trial is completely:
All you have to do is go to our sign up page, complete your details and be ready to be super impressed.
You could of course decide to do nothing.
No paid advertising on Applegate.
No free trial of A1WebStats.
If you realise that you can save budget by not spending on Applegate, then we’ll have achieved something (assuming you have accurately tracked what you do or don’t get from your Applegate listing).
If you don’t trial us, that would be a shame, but as the saying goes: “you can lead a horse to water … ”.
But we’ll be visible to you, via adverts that you’ll see online reminding you about A1WebStats.
And maybe, when the time is right in the future, you’ll click back through to this page and we’ll be happy to offer you a free trial at that time.
Thank you for reading.
The A1WebStats Team
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