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Archive for August, 2009

Analytics for business people | Referring sites

Categories: Analytics Website Analysis
August 25th, 2009 by Pete

Referring Sites

Because of the important nature of referring traffic this module extends the Traffic Sources Overview to focus explicitly on where referrals are coming from.
referrals

Business Interpretation

Referring websites are just as important to your business as off-line sales referals;

  • They bring prospective clients to your site
  • You are being ‘recommended’ by the referee

    • YellowPages Online and other internet directory sites should also appear in this category if they are being used as part of your online promotion.

    This referral data along with metrics like Pages/Visit will you to evaluate these sources as viable contributors to your business promotion.

    If you don’t recognise the websites referring business to you, then make the effort to establish a relationship with them;you might get even more referrals!

    Analytics for business people

    This is one of a series of articles to help business people extract value from their Analytics reports.

    Got questions about interpreting your Analytics reports?
    Leave me a comment

    Cheers
    Pete

     

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    Analytics for business people | Traffic Sources

    Categories: In the news
    August 25th, 2009 by Pete

    This simple pie chart provides a simple correlation between the major traffic sources
    i.e. where the traffic to your website comes from.
    traffic-sources-chart

    Search engines

    The search engines that visitors used to find your website
    Major Australian search engines are Google, Bing (Microsoft) & Yahoo
    Organic is the ‘natural’ method of searching

    Direct

    Visitors who typed the website address into their browser to visit your site.

    Referring sites

    Visitors who clicked on a link on another website that referred them to your site

    Business Interpretation

    Understanding where your website’s traffic comes from is an important element in building your website’s success. Being able to increase traffic equates to building your online exposure and hence your sales opportunities.

    Search engines
    If your site is featuring in search engines then it is attracting visitors based on keyword searches
    Investigate the Keyword section to see what they have been searching for that resulted in a visitor to your site.

    Currently in sites I manage (i.e. Australian business websites) Google typically generates 70-98% of organic visits and interestingly Bing has an increasing presence currently at 1-3%

    Direct visitors are individuals who have either:

    • Previously been to your site and are now revisiting
      This is an important activity in purchase decision making, where clients scan various websites before returning to the most desirable ones to make a final purchase decision
    • Regular visitors who are returning to check for updates, specials or to book again
    • Responded to off-line adverting or an off-line referral and are visiting the website to investigate further as part of their purchase decision making process.
    • Internal staff visiting the site or
      Internal staff who have the website set as their home page (not recommended)

    Referrals are visitors who have found your site via another (referring) website by clicking on a link. As in off-line business referrals are an key source of business, and growing successful referring sites is an important business building activity.

    Analytics for business people

    This is one of a series of articles to help business people extract value from their Analytics reports.

    Got questions about interpreting your Analytics reports?
    Leave me a comment

    Cheers
    Pete

     

    No Comments »

    Analytics for business people | Visits & Site Usage

    Categories: Analytics Website Analysis
    August 25th, 2009 by Pete

    Visits chart

    This chart shows the fundamental web metric, Visits displayed over the report period.

    visits

    Visits should be slowly increasing because you’ve been working hard to get more prospective clients to your website. It is quite normal for traffic to ease during weekends and holiday periods in a business website.

    Site Usage

    Visits

    The number of visitors to the site
    Note this is not a direction correlation with visitors because if one visitor came to the site three times this represents 3 visits.

    PageViews

    The number of times a page was viewed or displayed
    If during a visit, a visitor viewed a particular page 3 times then this represents 3 page views

    Pages/Visit

    The average number of pages viewed in a visit
    This is a key metric as it represents the level of visitor engagement with the site.

    Bounce rate

    Represents the portion of visitors who leave the site immediately after visiting it i.e. they ‘bounce’ straight out of the site

    Average time on site

    Average period of time that visitors spend on the site

    % new visits

    The portion of new visitors to the site

    Business Interpretation

    As with any advertising, the business needs to gain exposure to prospective clients.

    A healthy level of visits is paramount; particularly increasing over time.

    Weekends, public holidays even school holidays can impact website visits

    A good portion of new visitors who represent new prospective clients is also key.

    The Pages/Visit signals the level of visitor interest and is particularly useful in later report modules to make judgments about the value of traffic sources etc.

    Analytics for business people

    This is one of a series of articles to help business people extract value from their Analytics reports.

    Got questions about interpreting your Analytics reports?
    Leave me a comment

    Cheers
    Pete

     

    Tags:
    No Comments »

    Google Webmasters Tool | Top search enquiries

    Categories: Tools WebMasters Tools
    August 24th, 2009 by Pete

    Top Search Enquiries is highly useful data that can provide valuable insight into how well your website is performing.

    At a simple level it shows how you site ranks for various recent searches in different countries’ Google.

    The data is displayed in two sections; Impressions and Click Throughs

    Impressions

    Impressions

    • % shows the portion of the top 100 searches this represents

    • Query is the search that someone used

    • Position is the highest Google ranking averaged over a week

    So in this case 15% of searches for internet marketing featured the Succinct Ideas site and in those searches on average if ranked #15.

    Click Throughs

    Clickthrough
    Click Throughs shows how many searchers then visited your site, and confirms the proportion, keyword and ranking

    Filtering

    This report can be filtered to individual Google country of origin and for a selection of time intervals.

    Interpretation

    Top Enquiries provides a harsh reality check about search results that your site is being listed in, and begs the questions:

    Keyword selection

    Do these searches represent business opportunities for your business ?

    - Are they unrelated to your business

    - Are there too few searches to attract viable traffic volumes?

    Ranking

    Is your site’s ranking too low to attract viable traffic volumes ?

    Conversion

    If you site appears in search results why does no-one click on your SERP ?

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    Google Caffeine | More than just a reaction to Bing

    Categories: In the news Organic search
    August 19th, 2009 by Pete

    Has the hint of commercial pressure spurred Google into action to create an interesting new search architecture tagged Caffeine ?

    You can try out the web developer preview version of Caffeine here:

    Is Google feeling the pressure of Microsoft’s continuing battle to gain a share of the internet ?

    Microsoft have invested significantly into their new search incarnation Bing and there certainly is interest amongst my clients based on recent questions

    There’s even evidence that Bing is being used more now than MSN ever was; BUT let’s put that into context. This table compares the proportion that search engines are used in a popular Australian website in the last 4 weeks from 19 Aug 09

    Search engine

    Visits

    google

    93.9%

    bing

    2.9%

    yahoo

    1.8%

    search

    0.5%

    msn

    0.3%

    live

    0.2%

    aol

    0.2%

    ask

    0.1%

    altavista

    0.1%

    alltheweb

    0.0%

    Google represents 94% of all searches that results in a visitor to the site.

    At 2.9% Bing is slightly higher than I would normally expect.

    Microsoft Search Network (MSN) and Live (an earlier Microsoft search engine incarnation) continue to spiral into online irrelevance

    While I enjoy conspiracy theories, there is just one fact that this one over-looks and that is that Google are continuously building new solutions; enhancements and gizmos. To suggest Google have cranked out Caffeine in response to Bing ignores the amazing stream of new products and enhancements that continues to flow out of the Google online solution factory.

    Amazingly most of these are absolutely free.

    In fact my personal favourite conspiracy theory is that Google Wave will be the last straw in undermining Microsoft Office by defusing Outlook’s domination of the business desktop.

    Feel free to share your favourite Google / Microsoft / World domination conspiracy theory with a comment.

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