10 Easy Ways to Improve Web Analytics

10 Things You Can Do With Little Effort to Improve Web Analytics

1) Be sure to understand the reason for your web site. Is to sell something, capture email addresses or just to provide valuable information to your target audience. If there is no money involved then it is just a hobby. Action: Write down the reason for your web site.

2) Be sure that I am contributing content that is deserving of the world to read. Then measure your successes by looking at how many readers subscribe to your RSS feed or email feed for your site to see how valuable the readers see your site. Action: have a call to action to encourage readers to subscribe to your blog at the end of each article or post. Start to track the numbers of RSS readers each month.

3) Start to get your readers to comment on your blog by asking questions or having a controversial story that gets your reader engaged. Measure the numbers of comments as an indication that your readers are enjoying your site. Action: Have a call to action in your blog post or article that encourages readers to comment. One good way is to ask a question to elicit a response.

4) If you have something to sell on your site, it is important to measure the conversion rate for your visitors. Google’s webmasters tools has the ability to capture the conversion rate for your site for free. Action: Set up Google webmasters tools and start to measure your conversion rate. Extra credit Action: set up a split test to drive improvement in your conversion rate.

5) Start to use a keyword report to see what keywords people are using to find my blog. Compare your articles to the keywords people used to come to your site and determine if you are using an optimized keyword strategy for your site and how you can improve your articles to better meet the needs of your visitors. Action: Review your site analytics from Google analytics or other source each month to track and improve your keyword strategy for your site based on what keywords people searched for to arrive at your site and the bounce rate for those keywords.

6) Be sure to measure your bounce rate by keywords. If you have a high bounce rate for a particular keyword, possibly you want to drop that keyword or enhance the value your reader gets when they arrive at your site looking for the answer to their problem or need when they searched for that keyword. Look at your top 20 entry pages, top exit page and top pages with high bounce rate and then take action to improve the value provided to your reader on these pages or evaluate changing the keyword for the page to better match what visitors are looking for. Action: Track your bounce rate by keywords each month with the goal to reduced the bounce rate on your targeted keywords by providing better value based on the desired results your reader is looking for.

7) Be sure to set a goal for your website for the next 30 days. The goal should not just be “get more visitors” because morevisitors are not a good business goal. Set a goal like get more comments because it shows reader engagement or set a goal of more RSS readers because it shows that your readers want more of what you have to offer. If you have a site that makes money, measure the income generated and set a goal to increase the income. Be sure to measure increased income against the conversion rate so you can work on conversion rather than just getting more visitors. Track things that will tell you why you had a spike in sales. When measuring conversion, you have a better idea of how well your sales funnel is working. Action: Write down the goal for your web site for the next 30 days and have tracking in place to measure the results so you will know what worked and what did not.

8) Be sure to turn your analytics data into information. The web is full of data, yet it is the wise person that can interpret the data and use it to modify the web site and predict future behavior. There are many tools to help know what your readers are doing on your site. What are the hot spots by using a heat map program or use split testing to determine what page converts better. Action: Analyze the data you get from your web site and pick a few key comparisons that you can track over time so you are dealing with information instead of just data.

9) Measure you web site ROI by tracking your goals. Did you get more work, sell more products, or get more speaking requests? Measure your ROI against your costs like time to build the site, cost of advertising, opportunity cost and numbers of visitors. Then make small changes and track the improvements. Action: Set up metrics to know how much time you spend on your site, how much money or time you spend on advertising so at the end of the month you can compare the investment to the desired results.

10) Set up feedburner for your RSS feed so you can track the subscribers, stories they read and other relevant data that you canturn into information that will improve your sites success. Action: Set up Feedburner for your site and look at all the data available to you and find out what articles are being read more often so you will have a better idea of what your visitors are looking for and interested in. Provide more of the information that you find they open and read and less of the information about what never gets opened and read.

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Tagged as: small business tips