After Google made Google Analytics available for free in the year two thousand and five, marketing and media experts and all those who fall in between that realm have poured over the statistics of page views, preferences, visitors and unique elements and have struggled to understand them.
Many business owners have even looked over the statistics altogether. The narrow way of thinking is to focus on the number of sales and leads that a web site can contribute. If a website does not generate sufficient traffic or have visitors leaving contact details then there is an issue with the performance of the website.
Jakob Nielson, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, researches about evidence based online user research and his results have a lot of difference from what was perceived regarding the statistics. Conversion rate is the important data statistic. It represents the percentage of visitors who respond to the calls to perform actions on websites. These actions are actions such as clicking on certain articles or scheduling appointments and buying products. The rate provides accurate data of a website’s ability to engage a visitor and it is based upon percentage and not purely numerical weight. Conversion rate can be achieved by dividing the number of people who engage in an action with the number of people who visit the website in total.
Boosting the percentage is the important bit and it requires considerable amount of research and marketing. Nielsen states three traditional measurements which add to the conversion rate of a web site.
- Search Engine Ranking – If a certain website does not list well on a search related to the industry the firm works in, the firm’s website will fail to have any online application. In a glaring statistic, only two percent of the online population chooses to search beyond the first page of results. Search Engine Ranking can be boosted up by engaging in Search Engine Optimization which, as stated, many firms have started to do. Search Engine Optimization features daily content writing and updates and back end designs which can result in the website featuring on page one of the search.
- User loyalty – This is a statistic of the number of repeat visitors to a website. These are different to uniques. Less uniques mean that the audience coming into the website are largely made up of loyal customers. It’s a common marketing axiom that you can always sell to loyal customers the same products again than to convince an entirely new one.
- Bounce rates and visit duration.- These are two very related statistics. Bounce rate is the percentage of users who exit the website after the first view. This does not speak flatteringly about a website. Visit duration is the total number of pages scanned and the amount of time spent visiting the web sites. A low bounce rate and high visit duration speaks of the success of a website.
Even though these metrics may all be improved, the cutting edge is provided by content and quality of services. This means that if a product is sought after, conversion rates will be high even if the website is not very good.
Very nice breakdown of the ins and outs of Google Analytic.This article is very useful and to the point thanks for the info.