Monday, August 19, 2013

Website Analytics For Amateurs

By Peter Selby


When you mention website analytics to any person, sometimes the 1st words let out in reply are "Google Analytics". Google Analysing is one analysis tool of many that are accessible to you. Google has the benefit because it is free. However , to the 1st time viewer it can be daunting to see all of the available information, and most newbies haven't any idea where to start. Actually most business that have analysing installed focus closely on the volume of traffic which has visited their internet site. But just using analysis for this reason is a mistake and means you're also losing out on some valuable promoting information.

First things first though! To reap the rewards of website analytics you first have to install it. Depending on which analysing package you decide on , installing the required tracking code may be something you can do yourself, or you could need to pass this job over to your web-master to perform for you. The key nonetheless is to get analytics installed as soon as possible after your site has been built, even though you have no plans on taking a look at the info for a period of time. By doing this, the info will build over time, and you'll be able to show a before and after comparison, when you perform particular tasks design to force traffic back to your site.

A vital tip is usually to guarantee your tracking code is applied to all of your site's pages. And remember to add them to new pages you create in times to come. If you happen to have got a dynamic website that enables you to immediately create new pages using templates, then it is straightforward to apply the tracking code directly into the templates, that way new pages will immediately have the code embedded on creation.

So onto the critical part - what must you be searching for within your analysis dashboard? Most S.E.O specialists agree that websites owners should really target the following statistics measurements:

1. Key Performance Indicators (KPI) - This means you need to identify what your most important goals are for your internet site. So as an example you will have a new selling initiative which has been set up to increase traffic to your site and to gain you more new customers. Using analysis to examine that your traffic and conversion rates are inflating will tell you if your initiative is working, or if you need to rethink the way in which you are doing things.
2. Referring Sources - This appears under Traffic Sources/Direct Traffic and gives us a top level view of how many pages and how many visitors we have had, and from which websites they are clicking through from. If you're paying for organic search engine optimization, or if you have placed a selling video on YouTube (for examples), you need to know if the search websites and/or YouTube are good sources for sending people to your internet site. However , whether or not the numbers you are seeing are reasonably low, you also have to know if folks are basically picking up the phone and calling you, after seeing your telefone number listed in the search sites (e.g. Google Plus Local listing) or from your YouTube video, before deciding if this is cash being wisely spent or not.
3. Bounce Rate - This is the quantity of folk who land on your site, and then exit immediately after reviewing that landing-page, without first clicking through to other pages on your website. In the eyes of Google, having a high bounce rate implies that the particular page doesn't have high quality and meaning full content, and that's why folk are clicking away from your site. Although this could not always be the reason why folk are clicking away, Google will still penalise your internet site rankings if they see a high bounce rate. So , regardless of whether your plan is to have a single landing-page with a form embedded for contact, you should make a 'Thank You ' page that the visitor will get to automatically after sending their details in the shape, so as not to raise your bounce rate more than you have got to.
4. Conversion Rate - Knowing the volume of traffic your website is getting is of no value to you without understanding what your conversion rate is. Changing your traffic to consumers or subscribers is what it is all about. It is better to have 10 visitor visit your internet site and have 1 subscribe to your service, than to have 1,000,000 visitors with no customers remotely. By identifying where your visitors are coming from, and which of those convert for you, will enable you to evaluate your online selling budget and put extra money into the places that are driving more converted traffic for you.
5. Social Media Activity - At the moment social signals are great when referring to Google assessing how applicable your site is. If you know what subjects and talks are driving the most website. Traffic to your internet site will assist you in planning and social your social media efforts so as to boost traffic and awareness of your brand.

There are several measurement signals that are often available, for example 'returning v new visitor' comparisons, length of stay in your internet site, number of pages visited, and so on. Which will also turn out to be handy. Nonetheless as a amateur you should focus on the 5 measurements above until you are used to reading the information and understand completely it.




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