Practical Application of Your Website Analytics
I’m skipping the introduction and the cute analogy this time and jumping straight in to some practical applications of the Google Analytics Dashboard and how our team applies website analytics data to gauge the health and vitality of our own site and strategy. Let’s dive in; and as you’re reading, think about how these evaluations of data may apply to your website strategy and business goals!
Monitoring the Correlation Between Our Blog/Social Posts and an Increase in Site Traffic
Each week, a member of our team contributes a blog that we post here on our journal page. Each new blog is accompanied by a post on our own social feeds the following day. When I look at our analytics, I notice a few things: 1) Our site traffic is heavier on the days we post to our social networks, so our social posts are driving traffic to our blog… just as we intended! 2) Specifically, our mobile traffic is heavier on the days we post to our social feeds. Great! It means we’re meeting people where they are… on their mobile device… and they’re responding by visiting us online!
By thinking strategically and assessing our web strategy alongside a data driven user journey, we receive the validation that our social strategy really is working and it’s not a waste of our time for us to write our weekly blog!
Assessing the Time Spent On Each Page
I’d like for people to spend the most time learning about our web packages, our previous projects, and our blog. The analytics dashboard lets me see, on average, just how much time users are spending on those pages. Here’s our data for the last month:
- The ‘Web Packages’ page: 11 minutes/8 seconds
- The ‘Projects’ page: 3 minutes/5 seconds
- The ‘Journal’ page: 1 minute/13 seconds
I’m thrilled with the data for those first two pages, but am curious about our blog entries. Is 1 minute and 13 seconds enough to read a full blog? Is our content engaging enough? Are people beginning to read and then leaving before getting to the punchline of the blog? We’ll keep an eye on it!
Monitoring the Bounce Rate of Your Website
No. It’s not the number of times you can jump on a trampoline in a minute. It’s the percentage of people who visit a specific page on your website and then leave without taking further action. It’s great in some cases, not so great in others. When you’re really ready to dig in, visit the Behavior Flow page in your analytics dashboard. It offers a full user journey map so you can see where everyone started, where some of them ended, and where the rest of them dropped off of the site along the way!
On the Terrostar website, a high bounce rate on the contact page doesn’t bother me so much – they came to the site, got the information they needed, and then left. A high bounce rate from the page that highlights our project portfolio is concerning to me – they landed on that page, saw our work, and just left without even wanting to learn about our pricing or our team? However, a high bounce rate on our blog page doesn’t concern me as much – they came, they read, they thought, they left, and hopefully they come back again next time!
So you see…little nuggets of knowledge can go a long way! Don’t feel discouraged or get lost making wild assumptions along the way. DO spend some time in your dashboard poking around and seeing what data may be most valuable to you. Need help figuring it out? Give me a call. I’m a ‘closet analytics nerd’ and I thrive on new data to explore!
By Brenna Love