Day 1: Website Analytics - What's happening on your website?
Written by Jaren Green | 03 March 2010
We start the 10-Day Makeover Project with our most trusted tool - Website Analytics. Many thanks to the Participants in this first Makeover for allowing us to examine, judge, and even criticize their websites based on these statistics.
If you are following along and improving your own website during this 10-Day Makeover, we encourage you to think through these steps. Details about the participating sites are provided below.
STEP 1. Mentally Submit to Measurement - Those are harsh words. It takes courage and humility to submit your work to measurement and criticism. Measurement, however, is the first step to improvement.
We put Google Analytics on some of the participating websites early. Here is what we found:
- TripleScoop Premium Market Research was receiving almost no visits. This company had invested time and money in their website with virtually no return.
- Rocky Mountain Reserve did not use analytics before the 10-Day Makeover. They rarely sent people to their website, so they assumed that no one was watching. They were wrong. Some 20-30 customers and potential customers visit their site every day.
If people are visiting your website, you want make a good impression. I personally make important business decisions based on the things I see on a website - and so do you. Find out how many people are visiting your website and act accordingly.
2. Start Counting - Most of the participants in the 10-Day Makeover had no tracking before we started. Submitting to measurement was not a problem, but time was. Google Analytics is simple to a webmaster, but takes the average business person about 30 hours to learn and set up.
Tips for getting it done:
- Use hosting services that provide help
- Use web designers that measure their own work
- Ask someone with experience for help
- Don't wait until you have more time - Start Counting
What not to do:
- Private Title Loans has a page counter on the bottom of its homepage. Such counters provide enough informtion to confirm that your website is alive, but not enough detail to help you make good decisions. When customers see these counters, they will probably guess that you are flying blind.
3. Always Count the Same Things - We recommend that you keep it simple. If your site is transactional, focus on counting "visits." Every visit is another chance for a transaction. If your site is for relationships, count "visitors."
Whatever you do, avoid reporting one measurement this month and a different measurement next month. People who jump between counting hits, visits, entries, uniques, visitors, etc. are either inexperienced or hiding something. Pick a value and stick with it.
4. Focus on Trends - Website Marketing is not a campaign. The average campaign lasts a very short time. Think of your website as an ongoing program and track the results over many months.
- Action Profiles began work on their new website months ago. A lot of work was happening behind the scenes, but little to the live site. During this time period, new registrations were trending below where the company wanted them to be. Slower-than-normal growth really hurts when you are selling the eyes of your visitors to the advertising community.
As they release their new website (Congratulations guys!), there is a little catching up to be done. When you focus on long-term trends, you can see where things are going and take the appropriate actions before the situation gets out of hand.
5. Focus on the Goal - Making money is the goal. The typical analytics tool can produce an entire mountain range of statistics. Many people get lost in those mountains and forget about the end goal.
What statistics are important?
- Work backwards from the sale to find leading indicators
- Look at major flows and ignore the outliers
- Group web pages into sections and track success by section
These ideas can help you focus on what to improve or expand.
MORE RESOURCES:
- Day 1: What To Look For In Google Analytics
- Day 2: Functionality Plan - What does your website do?
- Day 2: 13 Ways Your Website Can Hurt You
Comments
I absolutely agree with the need to measure how your website is doing.
The common hit counters will only tell you how many hits did you get everyday. But, you need an Analytics tool to learn about how many people came to your pages, how long did they stay on your site, what other pages did they visit and finally, from where did they leave.
Once you collect the data for a few months, you will see the trends, how did you perform week, last month, what were the numbers same time last year etc.
It opens up an entire new area to improve upon...
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