Whenever someone starts using some random free Web analytics tool, they seem to be excited about visitors, page views, bounce rate.
This is usually because that’s what the default dashboard provides you with when you first log into, say, Google Analytics. But Google Analytics have spend years devising their dashboard, how can anyone say it’s not good enough?
Google Analytics (and most other vendors) show you a dashboard that’s very general. That works for a “general” website. However, no site is “general”. And living by a general dashboard screams mediocrity to me. This is why.
Visitors: are more better?
You look at the most basic graph showing your visitors. Better is when the graph goes up and to the right. So if your graph has gone up since yesterday, you’re doing a great job. Not necessarily so.
A higher number of visitors does not tell you why they came to the site or if more of them converted. It does not tell you whether they managed to complete what they came to the site to do. It does not tell you who they are. And worse, it does not show you how to replicate that result.
Page Views: is more better?
Engagement is a fashionable word right now and a lot of people measure engagement by page views. Usually, more is better. Well, if you’re a newspaper, selling advertising, that might be the case. If you’re an e-commerce site, more page views might mean people aren’t finding what they’re looking for, or you’re not helping them decide on a product. If you’re a social application, it might mean they’re really having fun, or that they’re lost in your navigation and can’t find what they’re there after. So are you sure more page views is better?
Bounce Rate: Is less better?
You have a site with an aggregate bounce rate of 90%. One of the first things to do, is to lower the bounce rate. However, do you know how that bounce rate is measured by your analytics solution? Some products, for example, measure it as single page visits. If your site is a blog, most people find the newest content on your home page, read a bit and never visit another page. They’re actually qualified visitors that are counted as bounced visitors. If your visitors come from a search engine page, they consume the content they got to your site for and then leave. Bounce visitors again, although they came to your site to get something which you actually provided quickly and easily.
The takeaway is this: when starting out with analytics of any kind, make sure you understand what kind of site you have, what your goals with the site are, how those goals fit in the reports and how the numbers in the reports are measured.
Visiting Basic Web Analytics
Whenever someone starts using some random free Web analytics tool, they seem to be excited about visitors, page views, bounce rate.
This is usually because that’s what the default dashboard provides you with when you first log into, say, Google Analytics. But Google Analytics have spend years devising their dashboard, how can anyone say it’s not good enough?
Google Analytics (and most other vendors) show you a dashboard that’s very general. That works for a “general” website. However, no site is “general”. And living by a general dashboard screams mediocrity to me. This is why.
Visitors: are more better?
You look at the most basic graph showing your visitors. Better is when the graph goes up and to the right. So if your graph has gone up since yesterday, you’re doing a great job. Not necessarily so.
A higher number of visitors does not tell you why they came to the site or if more of them converted. It does not tell you whether they managed to complete what they came to the site to do. It does not tell you who they are. And worse, it does not show you how to replicate that result.
Page Views: is more better?
Engagement is a fashionable word right now and a lot of people measure engagement by page views. Usually, more is better. Well, if you’re a newspaper, selling advertising, that might be the case. If you’re an e-commerce site, more page views might mean people aren’t finding what they’re looking for, or you’re not helping them decide on a product. If you’re a social application, it might mean they’re really having fun, or that they’re lost in your navigation and can’t find what they’re there after. So are you sure more page views is better?
Bounce Rate: Is less better?
You have a site with an aggregate bounce rate of 90%. One of the first things to do, is to lower the bounce rate. However, do you know how that bounce rate is measured by your analytics solution? Some products, for example, measure it as single page visits. If your site is a blog, most people find the newest content on your home page, read a bit and never visit another page. They’re actually qualified visitors that are counted as bounced visitors. If your visitors come from a search engine page, they consume the content they got to your site for and then leave. Bounce visitors again, although they came to your site to get something which you actually provided quickly and easily.
The takeaway is this: when starting out with analytics of any kind, make sure you understand what kind of site you have, what your goals with the site are, how those goals fit in the reports and how the numbers in the reports are measured.