maine web development, web design, internet marketing

Bounce rate, a web analytic, is the percentage of single-page visits your website receives. A normal bounce rate threshold is between 40-60% and a higher bounce rate indicates that web users are not visiting any other pages on your site. There are many reasons why a user might not view additional pages on your site, but if you notice that your bounce rate is high you can take action to reduce it.

1. Improve Usability
Web users’ patience and attention span lessens by the day and website usability can be a big road block. Once a user decides to pursue a search and link to your website, they need to be able to use the site to find the information they are seeking. Things that get in the way are pop-ups, auto-play videos, slow load times, broken links, and general navigation confusion. A clean web design and clear calls to action can significantly improve usability on your website.

2. Enhance Relevancy
Think about what a user wants from your website – what did they search for to get to your site and did they find it once they got there? Search engines use keyword tags and keywords within the content on the site to help users find the information they are seeking. Your site may have a high bounce rate because users are not finding what they are searching for due to poorly selected keywords. Make sure your keywords are congruent to the content topics on your site and that you keep your user in mind when creating new content.

3. Promote Interactivity
Give your users something to do once they get to your website. If someone takes the time to seek out your site and they find the content relevant, give them different options to interact with it. Try offering educational documents to download, a webinar to sign up for, or the option to subscribe to an RSS feed of your blog. Writing blogs and consistently providing new and useful content encourages users to consume resources on your site. Strong calls to action to present other pages within your site will likely lead to a reduced bounce rate.

Simply having an online presence is no longer the purpose of having a website. A website should be a resource for users to learn and engage with. The bounce rate is a valuable analytic to keep an eye on because it indicates if a user finds the information on your website useful. Remember, user preferences will change over time and providing useful content and having strong calls to action on your website help keep your bounce rate within a normal range.

When I’m asked whether or not a website should have search engine optimization, I always say yes.  Why wouldn’t someone want to give their site a fighting chance to be found when someone performs a search related to their business?  This is what I do on a daily basis and I’m very passionate about it – it’s important.

But that isn’t the only thing a website needs to accomplish.

eMarketer’s “2010 Digital Marketing Outlook” surveyed senior marketers regarding which activities are their top priority in the digital space this year, as well as which measures of engagement on their company websites are most important.  9.4% of the respondents sited conversion and ROI as the most important website engagement measurement.

Only 9.4%?!

Your website is a marketing tool and conversion should be at the top of your list.  Merely driving traffic to your website with SEO doesn’t mean your work is done; you need to engage those visitors and encourage them to take some sort of action.  Conversion can be measured in the number of contact forms submitted by potential leads, the number of blog subscribers you have, how many newsletter signups you receive, etc.  The idea is to have visitors interact with your site and start developing a relationship with you.

Let’s review a couple of the metrics in the survey that trumped conversion.

Time on Site

The average amount of time that people spend on the site was the most important metric of engagement according to the survey. I agree that this is a good gauge of whether or not people are interested in the information you’re offering and it’s one of the things I look at when I view web stats.  However, if the navigation and layout of your website is confusing, then a high average time on site would also be applicable, as people are spending time just trying to get around.  Ask a friend or relative to act like a potential customer use your website and find a specific piece of information and get their feedback.  Did they have a hard time finding it?  If so, you may need to adjust the navigation of your site accordingly.

Pageviews

This metric was also high on the marketers’ lists.  A pageview is recorded when a visitor, literally, views the page.  So if someone looks at your “software consulting services” page 1,000 times, what does that mean?  It means that your “software consulting services” page was looked at 1,000 times. All you can really infer from pageviews is that a certain page may or may not be popular with visitors.  If that consulting page is consistently a very popular page but you aren’t getting many people contacting you for more information, then you may want to consider the possibility that you’re not offering enough information about it or not reaching out to people in the right way.

So all other web stats, other than conversion, don’t matter?

Conversion should be the top metric that you look at to determine whether or not you are engaging people with your website.  However, that does not mean average time on site, bounce rate, traffic sources, most popular pages, etc., are not important.  These additional statistics can provide you with the insight that you need to figure out what you may need to work on to get people to take that desired action (convert).

But My Keywords Are #1 in Google

That’s great!  Does it guarantee that someone will sign up for your newsletter once they click on your site from the results page?  Unfortunately, no.   The first step is being found.  The next step is engaging the visitors once they’re at your site, taking them by the hand and leading them to what you’d like them to do.  You may not be able to convert them the first time, but with an easy-to-navigate site, lots of relevant content written specifically for your target demographics, and prominent calls-to-action, you’re well on your way.  Monitoring your website stats and making adjustments based on them will ensure that you are focusing on the ultimate engagement: conversion.

How often do you look at your website’s analytics? Weekly? Monthly? It’s really important that you understand how users are interacting with your site. Collecting site data and being aware of trends can help you assess how successful your website is as a marketing tool. It can also give you insight about your users – what information they are looking for, where are they coming from to find your site, and how likely they are to become a lead or even a sale.

The more you know about your users, the better decisions you are able to make about your internet marketing strategy.

Here are five things you can learn about your users by paying attention to your site data.

1. Are they intrigued? Your bounce rate, the percentage of single-page visits, indicates visit quality. Higher bounce rates tell you that the entrance page is not intriguing and does not have relevant content, causing users to leave the site. If you use landing pages and you see that they have a high bounce rate, you can conclude that the landing page is ineffective. Entrance and landing pages should provide the information that your users are seeking. A normal bounce rate threshold is 40%-60%.

2. What are your users most interested in? Analytics show you the most visited pages on your website and typically, after your home page, the most popular page is your “About Us” page. Many people are already looking for a product or service and want to see who they could possibly be doing business with. Make sure to humanize your About Us page as much as possible – use photos and show personality with biographies.

If you notice that your products or services pages are the most visited, have strong calls to action on those pages. Chances are, if they are looking deep enough into your products/services, they are interested in what what you are offering.

3. Are they bored or engaged? The bounce rate can be a good indicator of this, but if you do have a good bounce rate, the average time on site is another trend you need to be aware of. Your bounce rate may be 42%, which is good, but if the time on your website is less than 30 seconds, how successful is the content on your site? Web content is they key to engagement. Whether it is time spent viewing images, reading a white paper, or filling out a form, the average time on site is a valuable analytic to consider. Make sure your website offers useful content to its visitors to support engagement.

4. Do they want your products or services? Completing goals or “calls to action” are the best indicators to tell you if a user is interested in your products or services. Calls to action should use active copy that compels users to take some action – download a white paper, fill out a form, purchase something or sign up for a newsletter. High goal conversion rates shows that your users are interested in your products and services.

5. Where are they coming from? It is important to look at your top traffic sources and understand where users are coming from and how they are being led to your website. Are they coming from social media sites? Typing in the URL to the address bar (direct traffic)? Finding your site through a Google search?

When you know where your visitors are coming from, it suggests where you should be allocating your resources. If you see you are getting a lot of traffic from Facebook referrals, then you should be as active with Facebook as you can. You could even create a landing page specifically tailored to your Facebook traffic as an entry page to your site.

When collecting your site data, it is more valuable to look at it as a whole rather than focusing on one particular statistic. You might have a really low bounce rate, which is good, but you see that the average time spent on your site is minimal, which may imply poor content quality. Being aware of how your users are interacting with your site and learning trends can be very beneficial when making decisions about your internet marketing strategy. For example, if you notice that your site has particularly high traffic on Tuesdays, you could make a strategic decision to post a new blog every Tuesday.

The more information you can collect about your users, and assess and adjust based upon that information, the better your website can perform as a marketing tool for your business.

In my last post on Campaign Tagging, I walked you through the basics of setting up tagged links that work in conjunction with Google Analytics and Email Marketing. While campaign tagging is not a new feature within Google Analytics, it’s still a powerful tool to keep in your Inbound Marketing tool belt.

So let’s jump right into it! You’ve created a newsletter; used the URL Builder to generate your tagged links and have successfully delivered your newsletter. In order to see the results of your newsletters performance, you’ll need to log into Google Analytics: view Reports → Traffic Sources and then Campaigns. Once you’re in the Campaign dashboard, look for the specific campaign that you referenced when you were generating the links, i.e. Dec-2009-Week-Two

Once you click on your campaign name, you’ll have the ability to review different reports like landing pages, regions, new vs. returning visitors and more. We’ll be focusing on Ad Content today.

Ad Content or Campaign Content is one of the optional values that you can set when generating your tagged links (fig. 1).You will use this option to differentiate between ads within your newsletter. In other words, if you have three separate links that have the same landing page, this is where you would distinguish which link sent the most visitors to your site.

fig. 1

I used the example “Button” above to show that this link will be associated with a graphical button that will be used in a newsletter. If there was a text link as well, you would then change Campaign Content to “Link” and regenerate the URL. See example below.

fig. 2

The benefit of using Ad / Campaign Content is that when reviewing analytics, you’ll be able to view this report and see whether or not your graphical button had more impact than the textual link. With this data, you can gauge what kind of user conversion works best with your target audience. As you can see in the example above, the graphical button had far more success than the textual link for this particular campaign.

Although reporting and link performance is available in most Email Service Provider platforms, connecting your campaigns with Google Analytics gives you far more power. You can track and analyze your visitors behaviors AFTER arriving to your site via your email campaign and not just what link they click on within their Inbox.