How To Turn Analytics into Action

Running web analytics on your small business website is great, but let’s be honest – how many of us actually know what all those fancy numbers and graphs mean? If you’re running analytics simply for the sake of collecting data, what’s the point? Analytics are only useful if you take the data that’s generated and use it to create an action plan for your online marketing strategy. From traffic to conversions, here are four quick tips to help you make your analytics actionable.

1) Understand Your Entry Point

All of the popular analytic packages provide you with information on your top landing pages. If you haven’t taken the time to review this portion of your report, make time. Many small business owners assume that their homepage is the top performing landing page, but this is very rarely the case. If visitors are entering your page from the services section their experience will be slightly altered. If visitors are entering your Chatham-Kent website in an unexpected area, take some time to review that page. Does it contain enough information to convince people to stick around? Is your navigation clearly defined for easy surfing? Is your UVP (unique value proposition) clearly visible? Make sure your top landing pages contain all the right information to ensure a smooth experience for your potential customers.

2) Find Out Where Your Traffic’s Coming From

Make a habit of analyzing your traffic sources on a regular basis. Traffic will normally come from a handful of clearly defined sources: organic search traffic, paid ads, referral sites, and direct traffic. Traffic sources go hand-in-hand with keyword reports, so if you’re smart, you’ll review those stats at the same time. This information should help you discover:

• What your visitors’ expectations are: Traffic sources and keyword analysis should help you better understand what your customers are looking for when they find your site.
• What your visitors already know: A visitor that is searching for your company name or a specific product/service that you offer obviously knows more than a visitor who’s used a general search term to find your page. If you find that people are using specific keywords to find your site, chances are good these visitors are further along in the buying process. Are you providing them with a clear conversion path?
• If your visitors are finding what they want: How’s the bounce rate on your entry pages? Are visitors finding the right keywords on your entry pages? If visitors are finding your page with the right keywords, but quickly leave after just a few seconds of viewing, you’ve got some work to do.

3) What Happens Next?

The key to actionable analytics is being able to find patterns in your traffic. Once you find your entry pages, take a look at where you visitors navigate to next. What are the most popular pages on your website? Are these pages linked by prominent calls to action, are they listed in the navigation, or are they embedded in text? Why would a visitor navigate to that page next? What questions could possibly answered by surfing to these pages? Give it a little time and eventually you’ll start to discover patterns and persuasive pages will start to stand out. Are you making the most of your best performing pages?

4) Do Your Visitors Have An Exit Strategy

People are going to leave your site, the key is understanding where they leave and why. If your visitors are navigating away after completing a conversion, that’s great. That’s what’s called a planned conversion, and it’s music to a small business owner’s ears. Bounce rates, on the other hand, are the kiss of death. Bouncing is bad – it means that a visitor has rejected your website as a useful resource. If you have a high bounce rate on your homepage – eek! It’s time to make some major changes. An exit rate simply tells you how many people have exited your site from that page (visitors have likely navigated there from elsewhere on your site). If you find pages on your site that have a high exit rate, try and sniff out why. Look at the most popular entry paths to that page. What were visitors hoping to find by navigating to that page? What did they find instead? Was the link that lead to that page misleading or is your content too confusing? A few simply changes could change an exit page into a valuable stop on the way to a successful conversion.

Are you having trouble understanding your web analytics? Then give us a call – we can help you make sense of even the most complex data.