Cre8tive Flow

My last blog post kicked off a short series about helping people get warm and fuzzy with their web visitor data. After reading Warming Up To Web Analytics, Part I you should have a list of questions about website traffic that are important to you.

Now it’s time to get your toes wet in actual data.

First step, make sure you have data. The free stats programs that come with practically every decent webhost these days are so limited they generally aren’t really useful for my purposes, but start there if you have one. The following two easily installed programs have far more features than any of the other free tools I am aware of, and can be used to tickle all questions addressed in the rest of this series.

• Google Analytics is a very nice free web analytics tool. Google Analytics issues an invitation code within a few days of registration. There used to be a lengthy backlog.
• ClickTracks Appetizer is the free offering of ClickTracks Web Analytics, with paid flavors starting at $25 a month.

Get something in place on your site, and let it collect data for a few weeks – 1000 visitors is a nice number to start providing some decent insights. Sites with very low traffic can produce good data insights if you wait until you have information on 1000 visitors, even if this takes a month or more.

Now you can start peering at the basic reports almost any of these tools kicks up. Some people love swimming in data. You will know if you are one of these people in about 5 minutes. Be open to the possibility that you are. You may surprise yourself!
If you are not a born data swimmer, more success and happiness will be found by approaching these reports with specific questions in mind.

Look at one of the reports your tool provides. Does it seem to tell you anything that might be useful in answering your question? If not, move on to another report. In these first baby steps into your data, the goal is to find something that makes sense to you, and to avoid feeling overwhelmed at all costs.

Let’s get a little more concrete. Take a question like “where does my best traffic come from”?

Most tools have a referrer report that tells how many people came to your site from various search engines and websites.

• Which referrers send you a lot of traffic?
• Which referrers send traffic that views the most pages?
• Which referrers send traffic that converts best?

Now start looking for things you could do, based on this information.

Is there a source that sends you good traffic, reads a lot of pages or converts well, but not very many visitors - yet?

Visit the source. Why are those visitors interested? Perhaps it is a really relevant site, or a forum post that sings the praises of your site. Maybe those visitors are coming to a couple of really interesting pages deeper into your site. Are there some themes you see among your good traffic sources?

Is there a source that sends you a lot of traffic that doesn’t seem very interested?

Perhaps they don’t stay long, or perhaps they browse around your high level pages and never seem to really engage with your deeper content. Can you take some of what you learned looking at your good traffic sources and apply it here? Maybe you can write an article to create some context for your link from that site. Alternatively you could create content on the landing page of your site that is particularly relevant for these visitors. Perhaps working on getting links to interesting pages deeper in your site would be helpful.

The goal here is to find one or two referrers that start you thinking about one or two fairly simple things you could do to increase good traffic to your site, either by finding new traffic, or by creating more interest for existing traffic. Remember, don’t get overwhelmed – you’re just looking for one or two ideas!

Let me give a real life example from a site I know well. This site sells highly technical electronic “toys,” with an average pricetag of about $2,000. When we looked at the referrer report, we could see that the site did an excellent job of converting traffic from technical review sites. However, looking at some of the less valuable traffic sources, we found an interesting theme. Several sites referring visitors were beginner guides (e.g. “introduction to…, learn how to…” type sites.) These referrers linked to the home page of the site we were analyzing. Visitors came, looked around for a few pages, and left as soon as they ran into too much technical mumbo-jumbo. Bottom line, the site wasn’t working for beginners, even though this was a rich potential source of customers. We added a “beginner” path to the site, with a big friendly “beginners start here” link on the home page. Page views from these referrer sites doubled, and conversions tripled. Nice results from one little report.

Ponder the referrer report for a moment longer, then leave your data alone, and think about what you’ve found. Data works best digested in small bites – and acted on. Are you stunned, stymied or inspired? Visit Cre8asite Forums and discuss this post. Ask for ideas on how to learn about and get more of those good visitors.