Hitting the Mark
One of the very first questions you should be asked when planning a new website is what 'problem' do you want your site to solve for you?'
Clearly a great website isn't going to magically transform your business overnight and pick the Melbourne Cup winner for you but it definitely has the capacity to address some key 'pain points' in your business. This doesn't need to be complicated, time consuming or expensive ~ far from it. It really just comes down to planning.
To provide an example of this, often a potential customer will mention that they want a new website but when pressed don't really know what they want the site to do for them, they typically answer "because their competition has one". There's nothing wrong with this logic but why not delve a little deeper and look for potential issues that a well planned website could help or possibly even solve for you. You can take the standard approach of just getting something out there but what often happens is after a short time you feel like you have a site that isn't really achieving anything for you.
In a real life scenario this might play out like the following.
A nursery owner might decide they want a website, primarily because their competition has one. They decide on a basic 4 page site with the usual 'home', 'about us', 'our product' and 'enquiry' page because that's what the other websites in their industry have. Now the nursery owner is very busy (aren't all small business owners?) and doesn't have the time to consider the problems their site can solve for them, which is ironic because putting the time in now can potentially save a great deal of time down the line.
But..........what if the nursery owner thought about things from a different perspective?
Let's say the nursery owner looks at some problems that they're having with the business, for example repeatedly being asked the same questions by customers. The nursery owner is expected to address these questions as he is seen as an authority figure in the industry, but this generally isn't the best use of his time. Why not add a FAQ page to address this issue ~ this has the benefit of increasing efficiency for the nursery owner and also allows the nursery owner to direct a potential customer to the website which is a great 'sales' channel for the business.
The nursery owner may find it frustrating to have to constantly answer queries from potential customers regarding what they have in stock that's currently in flower or fruiting. What if the Products page was customised more towards the nursery industry by separating stock into seasonal categories for instance?
What if the nursery owner is having trouble letting the public know about their specials that are run as a monthly promotion? It's expensive to run a print campaign promoting this every month. Why not include a 'Specials' page that has the ability to be updated by the nursery owner themselves ~ traffic can then be directed to this page through more traditional forms of advertising by making mention only once to 'keep an eye on our Specials page'. This might even be a key point of difference between your business and your competition's.
What if the nursery is situation in a location that's tricky to explain or provide directions over the phone or in text. Why not add an interactive map to the site that graphically shows the location?
We could go on but this should illustrate the point well enough. A good practice is to actually create a fictional typical customer and then consider the questions or potential problems they might have and then consider how the website could help with this. I know some people who go so far as to give this fictional character a name and identity e.g. 'Fred the garden enthusiast on a modest income with wife and two kids' and then they'll ask 'What would Fred want to see here?'. The key point to remember is that your website can and really should address the problem areas of your business.
So why not ask yourself: Is your website addressing a problem for you? If not, why not get in touch for a free no obligation chat.Sometimes even a slight change can make all the difference.
Till next time.
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Getting a handle on Google Analytics
You probably receive a Google Analytics report every week, take a cursory glance but struggle to really understand the finer details. You probably know there is a lot of useful information there but it seems too confusing to even start trying to grasp, what the hell is a bounce rate anyway? It's not that difficult once you know the basics, and having a proper understanding of your website's performance can be extremely effective in establishing what is working well for you. For example, is a new print ad or directory listing increasing your traffic, or alternatively is your site's redesign stopping the flow of visitors navigating from your home page to a specific 'call to action' you have elsewhere on your site?
First things first
At a first glance you may notice that some of the information present is reasonably self explanatory e.g. visits, page views, avg. time spent on site, etc. In the interest of keeping thing's succinct I won't waste time going into these. But by all means if you would like a more detailed explanation please feel free to get in touch.
Bounce Rate:
Or exit rate, refers to the amount of site visitors who simply 'bounce' away from your site e.g. leave your site in typically less than 30 seconds. Take this to mean your site didn't contain the content the site visitor was hoping for.
Absolute Unique Visitors:
In a nutshell, this is a site visitor who has never visited your site before.
Page Views:
Not to be confused with 'hits' to your site. This term refers to the actual pages viewed on your site and goes hand in hand with average pageviews which averages out this total per visitor.
Content Overview
Simply speaking this refers to the pages visited on your site. This is useful in determining if your audience is getting to the pages that matter most e.g. your enquiries page or services page. You will notice a % change figure at the bottom of each section. This reflects how effective a change to the content or a direct call to action can be, increasing or decreasing traffic to your pages.
Technical Profile
This is a very useful feature of your Google Analytics report and often overlooked. The information contained in this section can give you a valuable insight into your typical site visitor. For instance detecting the browser used by the site visitor and type of internet connection e.g. dialup, T1 or broadband will allow you to profile your audience. For example if the majority of your visitors are finding you on a T1 connection you can safely assume they are landing on your site from a work location. Whereas if the average user is on a dial-up connection and using Internet Explorer (the browser most computers come pre-installed with) they are possibly less technically inclined.
How can you use this information to your advantage? Well for one if your visitors are on a slow connection, loading speed is going to be a major consideration for you. Avoid video and heavy use of animation. If however you have a reasonably tech savvy audience then you can take advantage of more bandwidth heavy content. If a large percentage of traffic is using a mobile browser e.g. Opera Mini or Mobile Safari, then it might be time to consider developing a site specifically for mobile devices or at the very least integrating some form of responsive design that resizes your content so that it is easily read on a mobile device.
Top Traffic Sources
This is where we get down to the real nitty gritty of your site's performance. The pie chart refers to the amount of visitors who have come to your site either from a referral site e.g. a directory site you have have placed your site on such as truelocal.com.au, direct traffic e.g. the amount of visitors who have typed your address directly into their address bar or more importantly the amount of organic search traffic you are receiving (i.e. essentially the people who have found you by conducting a keyword search in Google). Organic refers to natural search traffic as opposed to PPC (pay per click) advertising - the sponsored listings you see at the top and right hand side of the Google results page.
On the right hand side you will see the 'keyword' or search terms a site visitor has found your site with. We will cover Search Engine Optimisation in a later post but for now it's a great idea to understand how you can accurately guage your results.
Map Overlay
Lastly we come to the map overaly, which provides us with information on where our traffic is coming from. This can be very useful if for instance you are offering a local service. For example, a physiotherapist is highly unlikely to benefit from having a large amount of traffic from South America. If you are receiving traffic like this it is a fair indication that your content isn't targetted enough and that you may benefit from using more locality based search terms in your site's content. When it comes to search engines the number of hits is not all it is cracked up to be ~ you are primarily looking for a rate of conversion e.g. a lower number of visitors that actually make an enquiry is far better than thousands of hits a week and no real enquiry. We will cover how to improve your site's coversion rate in more detail in a future posting.
Before we move into effective site promotion and conversion, a basic understanding of how to check on your site's performance is essential. As you can see, your Google Analytics report is a useful tool when it comes to understanding the performance of your website and can ultimately help you develop content for your site that meets the needs of your audience. It can also be a powerful tool for guaging the effectiveness of your more traditional forms of marketing, especially if you follow the golden rule and promote your site by having your web address positioned prominently on all marketing material.
In future postings I will cover topics such as: Search Engine Optimisation, Site Conversion Rates, Social Media, Developing Effective Site Content and much more. In the meantime feel free to get in touch if you have a question relating to your Google Analytics report. Till next time.
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