Analysing Website Traffic

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Analysing Website Traffic

• Dan Belhassen
• greatBIGnews.com
• Modern Earth Inc.

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About your presenter

• Dan Belhassen
• Founder and President of Modern Earth Inc., an
  Internet technology company
• Website creators, online software developers,
  search engine consultants, new media marketing
  specialists
• Find me in my booth if you want to follow up
• Presentation available at http//modernearth.net/l
  ern2008

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Your Website

• An investment requiring care and feeding
• A marketing tool
• Promote your programs and services
• Provide up-to-the-minute information
• Can increase registrations
• If used correctly

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Maximize your ROI

• Currently tracking your site visitors?
• Why not?
• Not sure what to track or review?
• Takes too long?
• Not enough information from IT?

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Wouldnt you like to know

• How many people open your brochure?
• Which pages are never looked at?
• Which pages are most popular?
• Which course descriptions are read but never
  acted upon?
• Website stats provide you with this information

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How do I get stats?

• Use a web statistics service
• Specialized code is added to each of your web
  pages
• This code provides information that is processed
  and aggregated on a centralized server
• Your webmaster may already have stats available!

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Some Statistics Services

• StatCounter.com
• Free service, basic capabilities
• VisiStat.com
• Low cost, advanced capabilities
• Google Analytics
• Free service, advanced capabilities

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Google Analytics

• Will be used for discussion today
• Modern Earths visitor database
• Affordable (free)
• We recommend Google Analytics
• Google.com/analytics

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Most important word?

• What is the most important word in website
  statistics analysis?
• Conversions
• Why?

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Most important word?

• Build it and they will come
• Maybe
• But will they buy?
• Buying is conversion

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Types of Conversion

• Any action you wish a visitor to take
• Email newsletter subscription
• Survey participation
• Participating in online poll
• Reading blog entry
• Obtaining course details
• Course registration

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Conversion Tracking

• Can easily be a full time job
• You probably have other duties..
• Boil down traffic analysis
• Visitor Trends
• Review weekly
• Visitor Experience
• Review following each brochure period

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Visitor Trends

• Direct results from marketing efforts
• Email marketing
• Brochure distribution
• Postcard mail outs
• Etc.

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Visitor Trends

• Key metrics
• Page views
• Unique returning visitors
• Track in a spreadsheet by brochure
• Compare between brochure periods
• See high level results

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Visitor Trends

• Other metrics
• Geography
• Referrers
• Links
• Search engines
• Search engine keywords
• (Really part of SEO analysis)

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Visitor Experience

• Harder to quantify than trends
• But, more important
• As little work as possible
• For visitors, not for you!

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Visitor Experience

• Website Design Factors
• Browser support
• Which browsers are visitors using?
• This can change rapidly!
• Which browsers is your site tested against?

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Visitor Experience

• Website Design Factors
• Screen resolution
• What resolutions are visitors using?
• How does your site look at different resolutions?

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Visitor Experience

• Intuitive Design
• What does a visitor do on your site?
• How easy is it for them to navigate?
• Track their progress
• Experience the site from their point of view

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Visitor Experience

• What page-to-page path is being following through
  your site
• Are people looking at things in the order you
  want them to?
• Build clearer navigation
• Get rid of extraneous information
• Is important information being overlooked?
• May require additional design investment!

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Visitor Experience

• Entrance Pages
• Dont assume its your home page!
• From direct URL
• Bookmarked, emailed to colleague
• Why is this page so popular?
• From search engine
• What keyword did they use?
• Did they get sent to the right page?

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Visitor Experience

• Exit Pages
• Examine the top 3 - 5 exit pages
• Why are people leaving at that page?
• Are they running into a dead end?
• Why are people coming to your home page and not
  clicking any links?
• Perhaps they were looking for a different site?
• Perhaps they have you as their home page?

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Website Experience Audit

• Number of clicks
• Number of searches
• Summary ? detailed view conversion
• Detailed ? registration conversion

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1. Number of Clicks

• Keep your visitors experience in mind!
• No more than 3 clicks to get course information
• Click 1 enter search term
• Click 2 click on summary link
• Click 3 detailed information

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2. Number of Searches

• What are the top searches?
• Results found
• Relevant?
• NOT relevant?

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3. Summary ? Detailed View Conversion

• How many visitors are clicking on a course
  summary link to obtain further information
• Try changing some titles and track the results

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4. Detailed ? Registration Conversion

• How many visitors are registering compared to the
  number viewing details?
• Why arent they registering?
• Enough information presented?
• Cost/benefit being properly presented?
• Registration process too complicated?
• Knowing the conversion rate allows you to test
  answers

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Good Experience Checklist

• Text searches and categories
• Offer at least two ways to find your courses
• Search for someone who knows what they want
• Categories for people who want to browse
• 3 clicks to course information
• Any more and its a lot of work
• Click 1 enter search term or select category
• Click 2 summary links
• Click 3 detailed information

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Good Experience Checklist

• LOTS of detailed course information
• Online real-estate is cheap use it!
• Organize information in sections
• Allow enough information to answer any questions
• Flexible confident registration
• Support common forms of payment
• Visa, MC, AMEX, Paypal
• Emphasize security
• Option to print and fax or mail?

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Keep in Touch!

• Provide an e-newsletter signup
• Integrated with registration process
• Capture tire kickers and promote directly to them
• Drive future registrations

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Thank you!

• greatBIGnews.com
• modernearth.net

Presentation available at http//modernearth.net/l
ern2008