Not sure how many of you use analytics but you really should be.
Analytics from Google is a very good way of determining the "productivity" of your website. It's very complex but can be used in a simple formto give a snapshot of where your site is "at".
One of the most important areas is something called the "bounce rate". This is known as a "metric".
Whilst it's one of the most important - it's also one of the easiest to confuse.
What it basically means is someone came to your website, saw the page, did nothing and left. That's called a "bounce". Generally a high bounce rate is not good - say 60-70% bounce rate means people are not liking your site.
HOWEVER....there's a lot more to it than this. We have done a trial using our own website and measured this in a split test.
Our bounce rate sat at around 60% using test A and 35% using test B.
Our website runs as a blog we can turn the front page into 5 full length posts in one big long read. We can also turn it off into snippets for the same 5 posts.
Bounce rate goes hand in hand with another metric called "time on site". This is the time that a person is looking at your web page.
Basically when we had the 5 full articles on the website the TOS was quite long and very few click throughs. The opposite proved much more effective, reduced bounce rate, improved click throughs and improved overall readership of secondary pages.
The moral of this story is as follows...
If you have a front page that has quite a lenghty introduction on what you do, it may be a better idea to split this up into a snippet which can be clicked through on. This will effectively give you two bites at the cherry to hook your visitors using a call to action. (ie a form, a click here to buy button).
For example - make your front page intro is only one paragraph leading to a click through to the full article. Add a small contact form on the front page. When the user clicks through to the full article make sure you still have the same contact form on the new page - this is effectively imprinted in the back of their minds twice and acts as a subliminal instruction to click and buy or contact.
It's worth a try and you may find your website enquiries will improve.
Analytics from Google is a very good way of determining the "productivity" of your website. It's very complex but can be used in a simple formto give a snapshot of where your site is "at".
One of the most important areas is something called the "bounce rate". This is known as a "metric".
Whilst it's one of the most important - it's also one of the easiest to confuse.
What it basically means is someone came to your website, saw the page, did nothing and left. That's called a "bounce". Generally a high bounce rate is not good - say 60-70% bounce rate means people are not liking your site.
HOWEVER....there's a lot more to it than this. We have done a trial using our own website and measured this in a split test.
Our bounce rate sat at around 60% using test A and 35% using test B.
Our website runs as a blog we can turn the front page into 5 full length posts in one big long read. We can also turn it off into snippets for the same 5 posts.
Bounce rate goes hand in hand with another metric called "time on site". This is the time that a person is looking at your web page.
Basically when we had the 5 full articles on the website the TOS was quite long and very few click throughs. The opposite proved much more effective, reduced bounce rate, improved click throughs and improved overall readership of secondary pages.
The moral of this story is as follows...
If you have a front page that has quite a lenghty introduction on what you do, it may be a better idea to split this up into a snippet which can be clicked through on. This will effectively give you two bites at the cherry to hook your visitors using a call to action. (ie a form, a click here to buy button).
For example - make your front page intro is only one paragraph leading to a click through to the full article. Add a small contact form on the front page. When the user clicks through to the full article make sure you still have the same contact form on the new page - this is effectively imprinted in the back of their minds twice and acts as a subliminal instruction to click and buy or contact.
It's worth a try and you may find your website enquiries will improve.
- it's the javascript that records the bounce and reproduces it in your analytics data. If the script doesn't run then it can't record a bounce so it can never be a false bounce? Infact, if the script doesn't run no data will be recorded at all.
