We focus too much on micro reporting on our websites, most of which is comprised of too much page level analysis. When you get to page analysis, you can easily get down and dirty and waste too much time.
The time is right to focus on metrics, Key Performance Indicators, and tips on how to measure the effectiveness of individual pages. Basically:
- Don't Obsess About Your Home Page.
- Compute Your Cliff - Only Then Jump.
- Bouncy, Bouncy, Bounce - Its Good For You.
- Site Overlay - Something To Love.
- Think Holistically - Multiple Metrics, Key Context.
# 1: Don't Obsess About Your Home Page.
We obsess too much about our home pages. When it comes to improving effectiveness of the website, a disproportionate amount of effort is put into playing with the home page.
The irony is that we live in the world of extremely efficient search engines and websites visitors who use those search engines to find our site. If you have done even a half decent job of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), then most of the traffic will enter your website at a page deep within your site (at a page that the search engine thinks is most relevant to what the user is looking for, which is a good thing).
Every page on your website is now a home page, so every page has to make the kind of impression you want your website home page to make. So, task number one is to embark on a mission to convert your organization to this new mindset. That way, you'll focus on what actually matters to your customers.
Next create this graph for your home page to hammer the point home:
On average, around 30% of the site traffic sees the home page of my blog, even though most of the fresh content is on this single page. What's the number for your website?
# 2: Compute Your Cliff - Only Then Jump.
Now that you're off your home page, you have time to focus on other important pages on your website. Typically, a very small amount of content is going to be consumed by most of the traffic (think 20/80). To start working on the most value added stuff on your site, focus on the content most people are consuming.
A great way to identify that is to compute your "cliff": at what point do the numbers fall off the horizon quickly. Here's how that looks:
In the example above, after page 9, consumption of the content falls off the cliff, and there is a long tail. Now you know where to apply your precious few analyst hours.
For each organization, the cliff will be at a different point, so it's important to figure out what that point is. Then, you can work on the most important pages. Focus on where you can move the dial. Too often we miss this critical first step.
# 3: Bouncy, Bouncy, Bounce - Its Good For You.
You know how many people see a page, you know which group of pages to go work on first. Now, attack!
For the most important pages on your website, measure the Bounce Rate -- not the Exit Rate from the page, the Bounce Rate.
The bounce rate for a page is the number of people who enter your site on a page and leave right away. They came, they said "yuk", and they were on their way.
I find that Bounce Rate is a great first filter to helps focus your efforts. It's hard enough to get traffic to your website; there's no reason they should simply bounce off after seeing only one page.
Once you know the pages with the highest bounce rate, you have a set of actions you can take:
- What's wrong with the page? Content, calls to actions, navigation.. all are fair game.
- Who's coming to that page (referring urls, campaign IDs, search keywords)?
- Does it list an expired promotion?
- And so on.
You can see how this is immediately actionable: since a lot of people are looking at these pages already, you'll get immediate business value from any fixes you make.
My own personal observation is that it is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (and above) is worrying. I stress that this is my personal analysis based on my experience, but hopefully it gives you a feel for what you are shooting for.
# 4: Site Overlay - Something To Love.
Pages to focus on - check. Pages not performing well - check. Why are they not performing well? Meet your new best friend: the Site Overlay / Click Density report.
This is a vastly underutilized resource, mostly because it is not reporting, and most of the time we want to schedule things and report them. Site Overlay promotes analysis and takes time, but the rewards can be huge.
Simply open up your worst performing pages, or any other page, in the site overlay and analyze where people are clicking:
- Is the pattern where you expect it to be?
- No one is clicking on Buy Now or Next?
- Everyone seems to ignore your key left navigation structure?
- Why does the search box have most of the clicks?
You get the idea. By analyzing the patterns of clicks on the page you can get a great idea of how customers are reacting to your web pages and what they are or are not doing. Segmented click density helps you understand what different streams of traffic are looking for on your web page.
# 5: Think Holistically - Multiple Metrics, Key Context.
You've just finished analyzing the click density for links on your most important web pages. Now, don't forget the key context that is waiting for you for that page.
Most web analytics tools now give you all the key context you need within easy reach. Here's what I'm talking about from Google Analytics:
The context metrics you get for your Page Analysis efforts include: Time on Page or % of Exits or % of Entries at a Page or Keywords that drive traffic to a page.
When you analyze the page on your website, all this data gives you key context about performance. Maybe your page is performing sub-optimally because it's getting traffic for the wrong keywords. Or there is only deep content on this page, yet 90% of the visitors who see this page enter the site on this page. Or it takes visitors 500 seconds after they enter your site to find this important page (and by then have lost their patience with you).
Page analysis at this level is not easy, but you don't have a choice. There is no pat answer. You can't just look at one metric and understand why the page works or sucks. You're going to have to look at the whole story. Something will jump out at the Analyst (not the Report Writer), and the fix will be obvious.
Try it. Do this for the top ten pages on your site. I promise you'll be surprised at how much you'll learn.
And that's it, a simple five step program to help you revolutionize the process of finding insights that in turn will ensure your web pages are performing as well as they possibly can.
[Ed. Note: A longer version of this article, with more tips, was originally published on Avinash's blog.]