Budgeting 2009 Web Strategy - Analytics

In Part Two of our Budgeting 2009 Web Strategy series, we’ll cover Analytics.

Analytics
Cost: Free - $20/mo
Time: 1-2 hours setup for each site, 1/2 hour weekly analysis for each site
As I mentioned last year - as well as on many posts since - analytics is a critical facet of your web strategy not only because it provides measurement, but it is one of the most valuable research tools you have at your disposal. Most people install analytics on their website and never look at the data again. There are many reasons for this. Some people don’t have time and most just don’t know what the data means.
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Analytics Tips To Get To Know Your Website

Web analytics information is KEY to analyzing, developing, and measuring an effective web strategy. There is NO EXCUSE to not be tracking analytics on your website because one of the best and most powerful solutions is free from Google in Google Analytics.

Installing analytics software is just the first step. Knowing what the data gathered means is step two. Most of you probably check your analytics once every couple months and then check only one statistic… “visits”. Although seeing the number of visitors to your website go up via a shiny line graph is cool - tells you only basic information about your site. If you are serious about web strategy you want to look deeper into your data. There are revelations to be had if you know what you are looking for and simple tweaks based on this information can have a tremendous affect on your site.

“We have the data, we have the pretty reports. But we do not have an educated team who can take the resulting statistics and turn them into meaningful plans. The process of creating Web strategy and executing on Web tactics has gone missing.” - Jim Sterne, The Feedback Loop Gap

Here are five basic features of any analytics program beyond “visits” that you should actively be looking at…

1. Bounce Rate - The bounce rate basically tells you how many people landed on your website and left without navigating to other pages. For a blog this statistic can be a little misleading. Since most blogs have a stream of content, visitors often come to read the five latest posts. For sales and landing pages, the bounce rate should be monitored extensively. If your sales landing page has an 80% bounce rate you’re landing page is doing a horrible job converting your traffic.

Regardless of the context of your website there are ways to improve your bounce rate. There are a multitude of reasons for people bailing on your site - ugly, slow, annoying. Or they may have landed on your page via the wrong keywords (see #3 below). Once you can address the problem of high bounce rate you can begin to solve the problem.

2. Traffic Source Mixture - The traffic source mixture often comes in the form of a pie chart and tells you where traffic is coming from. Usually the most prevalent sources are a) search engines b) direct traffic and c) referral traffic. Ideally you want a solid mixture of all three. If you have 90% direct traffic you should optimize your website for search to improve organic traffic results. On the other hand, if you have 90% search traffic you should really try to improve your inbound links from other websites.

3. Keywords Report - The keyword report tells you how your customers are finding you. This is a VERY IMPORTANT aspect to knowing your website and using this data in your web strategy. If people are arriving at your website from keywords that you are not targeting or are irrelevant to your company/product/content you will likely have high bounce rates. The keyword report may also give you ideas on how to promote your site by targeting your “hot” keywords. Your keyword report can also serve to let you know if your SEO campaigns are effective. Are you getting a high amount of traffic for the keywords you are targeting?

4. Visitor Loyalty - How many of your visitors come back? This goes back to the old saying that it’s easier and costs less to sell to your existing customers than it does to acquire or convert new ones. This is true in your web strategy as well. A successful website - regardless of context - should strive for repeat visits. This helps you to build community and trust. Obviously you still need to focus on new visitors but you must strive be sticky and get people to come back.

5. Top Content - Knowing what the top content is on your site provides several advantages. If you know what page or post is most popular on your website you have a great chance at converting them into subscribers or repeat visitors. This can also help to reduce your bounce rate. Often times people arrive to your website via search to read a popular article and leave. You have a great opportunity at those popular pages to get them to stick around, subscribe, and possibly purchase. Make sure your pages that generate the most page views give the user ample opportunity to a) find additional, relevant content b) subscribe to your content and/or c) buy something.

Do you have any analytics tips or tricks? What data do you find ESSENTIAL to track? What have you done to improve bounce rates? Let us know in the comments…

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