Whenever we review website reports with our clients, the same handful of questions arise about important web analytics. Our answers help shape not only our strategy, but our client’s future business decisions.
Our clients receive custom reports every month from our Internet marketing team detailing key performance indicators (KPIs) in their website’s data. We use our developers, marketers, analysts, and consultants to the fullest to answer all questions and address any concerns. Because we focus on generating leads and garnering real results, the questions we often answer surround how to analyze the data as a valuable insight into their business. Those important questions (and our answers) are used to shape new strategies that have a big impact on the future of their business.
1. Why Is My Bounce Rate So High?
A bounce is calculated in your website’s analytics when a user leaves a landing page without interacting with it at all. Depending on what type of website you have and the industry you are in, your website’s bounce rate may not be so high. If your website employs the right lead generating features, a bounce rate between 30-50% is very appropriate. That means you are drawing people in who are looking for your services and successfully funneling 30-50% into the next stage of the buying cycle.
If you own an e-commerce site, for example, and your bounce rate is above 20-40%, you are selling something that visitors are not looking to buy. Examine where the most traffic is coming from and adjust your strategy as soon as possible. If organic traffic has a high bounce rate, perform a thorough SEO content audit of your website. When paid ad traffic is the high bounce rate culprit, adjust your campaign’s keyword strategy and targeting methods.
2. Why Is My Conversion Rate So Low?
Did you know that on average it takes multiple website visits for a user to make a decision about your company? Most of them are on your website to do research before they contact you, make a purchase, or invest in your company. We like our clients’ websites to see a conversion rate of approximately 10%. That may sound low; but honestly, not everyone who visits your website will be a good lead for you. Qualified leads are diamonds in the rough.
Whether you have an e-commerce, informational, or service-oriented site, your conversion rate depends on offering the right content at the right time with the right call-to-action. Does the website offer enough opportunities to convert? Are the appropriate offers available in the right spots for each of your buyer personas? Is your website mobile-friendly and user-friendly? Monitor the page engagement metrics of unique visitors, not overall traffic to your website. The bounce rate, exits, average session duration, and average pages per session are all important web analytics. If something is not working, try doing some A/B testing.
3. Why Have My Visits Gone Down?
Depending on your industry, seasonal traffic decreases could be common. This is the answer for many in the construction, medical, and travel industries.
Additionally, consistency across all of your marketing channels is key. You cannot selectively choose to turn off email marketing, digital advertising, etc. at any time and expect to have the same amount of traffic. If your industry does experience seasonal slumps, go ahead and slow down some marketing activities as to not waste time and money.
When you compare the ROI you can anticipate from Internet marketing versus traditional marketing, Internet marketing always wins in any report you read. We will always recommend that our clients invest in more digital activities rather than throw money at an expensive billboard or TV commercial. We do not recommend this because it means more business for us; we do so because it works!
4. Why Is X Feature or X Page So Popular?
We often see that the pages on our clients’ websites with the most page views are things like a contact page, careers page, or staff page. That is great data! If you want new customers, seeing that they are interested in who is on your team and how they can contact you is perfect. If you are actively recruiting new employees in a highly competitive industry, visits to your job listings are to be expected.
However, if you pay to develop a website app that is not being used, publish an important article that visitors are not reading, or create a landing page that is not converting well, then you are not marketing it properly or your intended audience is just not interested. At this point, you need to re-evaluate your marketing strategy, invest more in promoting your content or offer, or survey your current customers to pull more usable data about your audience.
A tip we often offer clients is to repurpose, reuse, or recycle their content. If you wrote a great piece of content last year that is still relevant to your customers, share it on social media again and re-distribute it through your email list.
5. Why Is Referral Traffic from X So Low?
It is not uncommon for our customers to have partnerships with multiple vendors. Sadly, it is also not uncommon for these partnerships to be ones you pay a high price for that generate less website traffic than what they promise you. This goes for certain types of ad placements, web directories, and industry websites.
A big referral problem we often see is with Yellow Pages (or YP.com). We are never surprised to hear that a Yellow Pages rep has seduced a new client into spending thousands with them a year for higher placements in their directory. Is Yellow Pages a valuable research tool for the average customer? The answer is yes. Do you need to pay big money for it? No!
Whether or not you advertise on YP.com, you will always get a handful of visitors (or referral traffic) every month from this website. Some partnerships are just not worth it, so make sure you collaborate with other websites or vendors that generate the traffic you want to see.
6. Why Do So Many Visitors Exit from X Page?
If you notice that one or more of your website’s pages have high exit rates, it means that visitors leave your site from those pages more than other pages of the website. It is common to see a high exit rate on your homepage, as 55% of people spend less than 15 seconds on your website. Usually, this is because of an accidental click, a slow loading page, an unengaging website design, or they just do not like what they immediately see. Dive deeper into what is going on with other pages if they have high exit rates.
Most often, the problem is a lack of some sort of call-to-action. Every (and I mean, every) page of your website should be informing the visitor of another action they can take. “Learn more,” “Download Now,” “Contact Us,” “Buy Now,” and other messages should be everywhere inviting your visitor to interact with your website. Make sure every call-to-action is distinct, well designed, and well placed to avoid having a visitor lose interest and leave your site.
If the highly exited page in question is a landing page designed specifically to convert visitors into leads, the offer does not match the user intent. Exit rates on landing pages are okay – that means the user is not ready to convert yet or they are the wrong type of visitor for your website. Again, a conversion rate of 10% is good. So if at least 10% of landing page visitors do not convert, it’s time to do some testing and re-strategizing!
7. How Can I Use This Data to Get More Qualified Leads?
The important thing is to monitor the correct website engagement metrics to shape your marketing strategy. Exit rate, conversion rate, bounce rate, and the other metrics explained throughout this piece are important website analytics that you need to be following. Additionally, you should be using what you glean from the data in your strategy. When something works, keep doing it. If something does not work, re-strategize.
If you want to know how to analyze website data or how to increase website traffic, talk to the experts on the Scale team. We can put together an inbound marketing strategy that fits your company’s needs.
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