The rise of analytics has ushered in a new era of business management. Once only obtainable through expensive market research, data is now available, and used by businesses of all shapes and sizes. Google Analytics, when used properly, is one of the most commonly used and powerful analytics tools on the market. Its also fucking free. Everyone is, or should be, using it. Sadly, many website owners misinterpret their website analytics data and rush off to hire a web developer fix things that aren’t actually broken.
Many website owners look to see improvements in two categories: pageviews and conversions. After all, a store that gets busier and sells more product is growing right? Perhaps, but if pageviews or conversions are not increasing, does that then mean that the business is dying? You see, this becomes an area where you want to dig deeper into the data and perform experiments in order to discover what is working and what isn’t. Maybe your product is missing a key feature. Maybe the prices are too high. Maybe your traffic is coming from off-topic search terms or bad advertising. All of this can be researched through a careful examination of the existing numbers.
Seasons Change, Data Does Too.
First, compare your data trends to previous quarters, then to one year ago, and then two years ago. Most websites go through natural fluctuations on a seasonal basis. For me, November and December are usually big months, while April and May are usually pretty slow by comparison. This is likely due to tax season fluctuations. Having been through a few years of this, I now know what to expect but initially I was caught off guard!
New websites haven’t been around long enough to demonstrate how the seasons will impact your analytics data. Your first year, your first quarter, and your first month are all experiments. You don’t have a large enough sample size at this point to fully understand the data, so you will have to rely on your professional instincts and short term experimentation to draw strong conclusions.
Where’s Your Traffic Coming From?
Where your traffic is coming from makes a big difference. Often times, this is reflected in your bounce rate. Think about it this way, if you ran an ad on the radio for a sale on cars but you actually run a billiards store, you would likely get a bunch of visitors who immediately turn around and leave once they see that you don’t have what they want. Your bounce rate is just that: customers who bail right away.
One of the best ways to analyze your bounce rate is to look at individual traffic sources and see where they are coming from. Start from your highest traffic pages and highest bounce rate pages, and go down the list. Are the visitors arriving through organic searches? Paid advertising? What are the search terms that are attracting them? For example, a user searching for “restaurants near me” and landing on a web page that talks about restaurants in a different state are going to leave. These people are hungry. Don’t do that to them, and don’t do that to your bounce rate, even if it means that your pageviews are improving.
Run experiments through A-B Testing
If you feel confident that your product is priced properly and your traffic is consistently coming from good sources, then its time to analyze the design of your site. To do this effectively, run an A-B test using Google Experiments so that you can compare and contrast page style and content variations so that you aren’t left guessing. The results will show you which page variation performed better, helping you to understand which parts of your website design are working better than others.
One good way to see if your website design is impacting your sales is to run a short A-B test where you put your product in a very simplified page. I’m not talking a page that sucks, just a page that is ultra minimalist – like this page. A page that this leaves little for the user to be turned off by in terms of design, so if it performs as poorly as your main product page, then you can bet that your website design isn’t impacting your conversion rate as much as your product is. Here’s the thing – a good web designer or developer is going to push you to isolate variables and take a good look at your entire online presence rather than just jumping into redesigning the site. This isn’t because they are proud of the site and are unwilling to change it, rather that they are willing to tell you not to spend your hard earned money on their services if they aren’t going to solve the problem.
…and cut yourself some slack!
The internet is an extremely competitive and confusing place. In 2019, there are a 1.8 billion sites and 51.8% of all internet traffic comes from bots. All Cyberdyne jokes aside, this means that most of the traffic coming to your site could be completely irrelevant. In the next article, I will show you how you can configure Google Analytics to filter out bot traffic and get closer to the truth!
– Merritt
Valier (pronounced “Va-leer”) is a boutique graphic design and website development studio focused on creating unique projects for unique clients. We work with companies and individuals that are pushing the boundaries within their industry and are looking for a partner in media development that can inject life and creativity into their marketing presence. With over 10 years of experience in the graphic design and website development industries, Merritt Lentz (Founder), has a proven track record of producing successful and innovative projects for a wide variety of clients ranging from artists and ski companies to government agencies and payment processing companies. Regardless of the size or complexity of your vision, we will help you hone in on a digital actualization of that vision and deliver a product that is rich and captivating.