Jan 27, 2017
Can you answer the question of how your website is doing? If not, read this.
If you can’t answer these four questions, be afraid … be VERY afraid:
- How many people are visiting your web site on a daily or monthly basis?
- How many mobile customers are visiting your web site?
- What is the percentage of new versus returning visitors?
- What is the average number of pages visitors are viewing?
We often speak to customers who want a new web site, and during the discovery meetings, we ask for the reason behind this decision. Can you guess what the typical response is? Almost 90 percent of the time the response is because the site looks outdated or not professional enough.
Although this might be part of the reasoning to build a new web site, we like to justify this through including some analytical data as to the effectiveness of the existing web site. Let’s walk through this together by using the same line of questioning above.
How many people are visiting your web site on a daily or monthly basis?
If your traffic is extremely low it might be a better choice to try to drive traffic to the web site first, before redesigning the web site. Having visitor traffic statistics will inform web developers how your existing web site is used; and by using analytics, we have greater insights into making a better web site for your customers.
One of the other analytical pieces of information we use to review traffic is the bounce rate. What is a bounce rate? Think of the bounce rate as a window shopping customer. They walked by your store, took a quick peek, and then kept walking. They didn’t walk into your store or give much thought to browsing your aisles. A bounce is a customer who came to your web site home page and then left. Typically this is a potential customer who didn’t see the value of going deeper into your web site. This is important data for web designers to assess how your home page is currently performing.
How many mobile customers are visiting your web site?
We use this data to evaluate if your web site needs a mobile or responsive design for customers who are on the go. If your mobile traffic is approaching 10 percent of total traffic to your site, we highly recommend making sure the mobile experience is addressed when building your web site.
What is the percentage of new versus returning visitors?
If your web site has a very low return rate, it typically means that you are not giving customers a reason to come back to visit. There are very few exceptions for being satisfied with a low return rate. Most businesses can provide a reason for customers to come back to their web sites. Some options include providing ongoing support through interactive forms, posting downloadable documents/forms, or creating customer portals through the web site. Also, examine your competitors’ techniques for gaining repeat visits to their web sites. Give this a lot of thought because it can be the difference between keeping a customer and your competitor gaining a new client.
What is the average number of pages visitors are viewing?
Providing an engaging customer experience on your web site typically means customers will visit three or more pages of your web site. We all spend more time with the people and businesses we like. Give your customers what they are looking for quickly, and try to gain pageview depth. This is one of the reasons we provide articles like this for free to anyone who wants to read them. As you spend time on our web site, you get to know us better which will hopefully result in us working together.
Most of these questions can be answered in a couple of seconds if you have the data in your hands. If you are a current client of ours and would like us to automate analytics reports to your email, give us a call and we can schedule these to be delivered weekly or monthly for you. Better yet, let’s help you gain insights on how to increase traffic, achieve deeper pageviews, gain repeat customers, and get better conversion rates. Give us a call at (559) 324-9341 to schedule an appointment.