It has been a long, great week for me. My new son Dominick Angel Snyder was born, and I am prepping for my trip to SES Toronto to speak on a panel about Twitter use.
Thought I would try to get a quick post in to feed the masses.
Analytics are a permanent part of the Internet marketing landscape, yet very few marketers know enough about how to parse though the click stream data to use it effectively. You can have thousands of dollars in analytics software, but without an understanding of what to do with that data you are pretty much throwing good money after bad.
There are three main metrics to look at in my mind, when you are talking about on-site analytics systems:
1) Bounce Rate - the number of visitors who enter the site at a page and leave within the specified timeout period without viewing another page, divided by the total number of visitors who entered the site at that page. This metric shows you if the content on your site is really what your users are looking for. You want to shoot for a bounce rate between 35% - 25%.
2) Conversion Rate - You should have a number of conversions setup beyond simply you “sale.” This metric will show you how the visitors interact with your site. Conversion rate can change according to market, but 2% can be used as a general conversion guide.
3) Navigation Paths - You want to know how users navigate though your site, it will help better usability. It also will help you optimize PPC and SEO campaigns when you know which landing pages and keywords are leading to conversion, and what route people are taking to that conversion.
There are other important analytic metrics, but to often marketers get caught up on numbers like time on site or simply pageviews, that they ignore the more important click stream data that can help them optimize their site or conversion. If you aren’t looking at these three items, take time this month to pay special attention to them. Try to take a step away from concept like pageviews and visitors as being the cornerstones of your analytics consumption. These metrics won’t help you improve your online strategy, but the three I mentioned about will.
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There may be a lot of other metrics, but the ones you mentioned are truly the most important because they directly affect conversion and site stickiness. These numbers are critical when determining landing page optimization. One other metric I like to use is a click heatmap so I can tell if my call to actions are working. I personally love webmasters that get caught up in pageviews and general traffic- they make my job easier!