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http://www.webanalyticsworld.net/2006/10/b2b-with-marcos-richardson-and-jim.html
WebtraffIQ Release:
Title: Post Christmas Web Analytics
Date: 4th January 2008
Author: Marcos Richardson Director WebtraffIQ
Post Christmas Web Analytics
Christmas web traffic is a valuable source of information to tap into for website owners. The likelihood that traffic increased, especially for e-commerce websites during the Christmas period is high. Blogs, video portals and Informational websites tend to get more traffic at Christmas due to the fact that people tend to surf sites external to their core business whilst thinking of their up-and-coming holiday. The e-commerce sites that offer Christmas products get the heaviest increase for obvious reasons.
It is a particularly useful to look at your user navigation patterns for e-commerce web sites and informational website alike. If you are running an e-commerce website targeting Christmas shoppers you can safely presume that the majority of your users wanted to find a product, purchase it and receive it with as little hassle as possible. So, drop out points, exit pages and feedback forms should be your focus with the aim of smoothing out usability issues and increasing your conversion rates. Keep in mind that understanding ’new users’ navigation patterns is your opportunity to increase your average ‘repeat user’ count.
Exit pages;
This is your starting point for honing in on problems with your website. You will find a very large amount of traffic exits tend to be from your home page. If your web site user has spent more that 40 seconds on your website and searched at least 3x pages then this is a natural place to exit given that your website is interlinked well. However, if your average user is spending less time and not navigating through to other pages then this is known in the Industry as your bounce page and bounce rate. There are many variables that can be attributed to a high bounce rate and here are a few…
- Long Flash introductions or splash pages
- Poorly targeted advertising, marketing and promotion
- Click fraud if you are running a Pay Per Click campaign
- Busy/messy home pages with too many options (poor visual usability)
- Repeat flashing graphics and too many external advertisements such banners and links
For deeper exits within your website (not your home page) the trick is to look at the previous page and the previous link clicked to the actual exist page. Many people click on a descriptive link only to find that they don’t get the information they were looking for. Therefore analysing all previous descriptions to the exit page will help reduce your churn rate.
Drop out points;
These could be things like forms that need to be filled in for credit card purchases, forms for further information and feed back forms. Also, page elements like video clips, banners, interactive forums, blogs etc. A good Web Analytics tool should be able to tell you exactly when and where people are leaving. If you see a marked trend in specific drop out points then you will probably need to make changes such as shortening the form or missing out a specific question if possible or removing the video clip etc.
Feedback Forms;
If you have online forms or site surveys then this is where you can get your qualitative answers to reasons why your website is working or not working well. Very few Web Analytics companies have yet to automatically combine this qualitative information with the quantitative actions of the participant. WebtraffIQ has a powerful tool which allocates a cookie to the opted in participant to the survey and matches this cookie with the original cookie served to the user when they first entered the website. The feedback form or survey is specifically set up to gauge peoples thoughts and feelings about your service; combined with their actual website movements give you powerful user centred profiling data.
The feedback form is where you should be able to first spot problems with your administration and logistics department. Thus, closing the loop for your website user that just wants to find your product, purchase it and receive it hassle free.
Quick guide to practical page optimisation
- Select the month of December within your reporting suite
- Look at your Exit pages report, ignore the home page and look at the next two highest exit pages
- Find the drop out points by either looking at the logs for that page or if you have a good analytics system select the exit points (exit links) report
- Try simply removing the heavy exit links or replacing them with new links (known as multivariate testing or AB testing) and revisit in a months time.
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About The Author
A member of the Web Analytics Association, Marcos Richardson is Director of WebtraffIQ with eight years of specialist experience in creating web traffic measurement and analytics systems and optimisation consulting for Blue Chip Companies.
www.webtraffiq.com Tel: +44 (0)207 379 3300
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