‘Bounce Rate’ as the Sexiest Web Metric Ever - Article by Marketing Profs

Be sure to read this article, I couldn’t explain it better myself: Bounce Rate’ as the Sexiest Web Metric Ever - by Marketing Profs.

Start measuring your website bounce rates everyone! Don’t let other metrics fool you. Having 50,000 unique visits a month to your website means nothing if 50% of people leave without clicking on a single link within your site. This is the metric that turned the web design industry upside down when people started to realize that their flashy expensive splash pages were scaring away precious traffic (See my blog entry on SPLASH pages).

It’s a great way to measure the effectiveness of particular keywords as well. If WebTrends is too confusing for you, try downloading and setting up Google Analytics for free to find out your website bounce rates today! (Actually you have to give the software 24hrs before it starts bringing back data to you). Good Luck.

Stop using Splash Pages!

I was recently at a client meeting where the client stubbornly insisted on incorporating a splash page on their website against my advice, claiming it builds a “brand”. I get a strong urge to voice my true profane thoughts out loud at moments like that but I know better..

A BRAND is not just a logo, picture or creative concept!
A BRAND has something called BRAND EXPERIENCE as its core component (intangible values). This experience must be reflected at every touchpoint. If my organization is supposed to provide a solution to a problem (be it a product or service), then my first and foremost aim is to make attaining that solution EASY and ENJOYABLE….this is BRAND.

Providing, yet another obstacle for someone trying to get onto your site creates a negative brand experience…and as if that’s not enough, everytime they return there it is again, your pretty logo blocking their way into your site. Do you really think that each website visitor (typically with a 3-click attention span) is thinking “wow, what a pretty colourful logo, this is really a great brand, i’m glad they keep reminding me what their colours are…”?

Think of running into your local gas station in a hurry to pay for your gas. Imagine opening the front door and entering a hallway with another set of giant mahogany closed doors at the end of it which have ” WELCOME TO COMPANY X “WHERE THE CUSTOMER COMES FIRST” written above them. You have to walk forward and press down on the big heavy handles to enter….(the offline equivalent of having to do an extra click online). Now doing that once may not seem so bad, but would you still return to this gas station [website] if another one was built beside it with no extra door [splash page], just a place to make your payment [substitute with primary goal of your site]?

This is just a fraction of SPLASH page problems. An even bigger problem is search engine visibility. Search Engine spiders will crawl a splash page (typically the root directory of your website) and make their opinion about your website content based mainly on the text on that page (ususally…”enter here”..or “French” “English”). These words would be seen as the primary keywords on your website since they are dominant on your first page. Are those the search queires you are targetting? Have you looked at the latest stats showing the over 80% of users use search engines (specific keywords) to find what they are looking for (even if they know the url)? How many times have you Googled a wesite whose URL is familiar to you?

A splash page will hurt your website’s visibility consideraby. Don’t believe me? Google this “SEO and Splash Pages”

I’ll leave you with a link to one of my favourite blog entries on this topic:

http://www.jemjabella.co.uk/scribblings/scr-splash.php

 

The 1-2-3 Call-To-Action concept; simple yet often overlooked

I have always been a big advocate of websites that have a clear call to action based on their objectives. The most popular design I see is the “1-2-3″ step concept. Example sites are: www.smartmoves.ca, www.mycanadaday.com, www.ready.gov. Can someone tell me what the disadvantages are of using this sort of strategy? I want to be able to play the devil’s advocate. As far as I see it, the 1-2-3 concept is fully measurable and helps address the short attention spans of today’s web surfers.

Government website ROI measurment…STOP measuring just "visitors"!!!

After working with numerous government departments and coming across the same issue I have decided it is time to write something about it.

A recent client asked me why I wanted to get rid of their Site A, which had 1Million unique visits last year, and yet I wanted to keep Site B, which had 50K unique visits (they had to ged rid of one or the other). A simple answer: Stop looking at quantity, look at quality of your visits.

What is the purpose of your site? What are your objectives for the site? What do you want your target audience to accomplish?…Is it to :

• Sign up for a newsletter?
• Fill out a survey?
• Use the interactive application built into the site?
• Read something important?
• Download a pdf Guide?

All of the above can be measured and tracked via free analytics software (such as Google Analytics) .

In the case of Site A, none of its initial objectives were being met. Visitors were leaving after browsing a few insignificant pages (there was no clear call to action, but rather a storage room of information). Over 70% of the 1Million visitors were staying on the site for less than 5 seconds…meaning essentially that they stumbled upon the site accidentally or were immediately turned off.

In the case of Site B, nearly 50% of the website visitors were actively engaged in the site and reached essentially every goal set forth in the website strategy. Many were staying on the website for 15+ minutes each time and returning on numerous occasions.

Which one would you keep? One that delivers on its mandate or one that you can show senior management is getting a lot of “hits”? The sad truth is that many public servants choose the latter because they cannot show the ROI/ROE of their website effectively.

Here’s a hint:

• Assign a relative importance value to each conversion goal (objective) you assign to your website out of 10
• Set up your analytics software to track how you are doing on each conversion goal (assign a performance value out of 10)
• Multiply this value by the weight of that objective
• Add up the scores
• Take this number and divide it by an ideal score to give you a percentage.
• Use this percentage as a quantifiable indicator with which you can gauge ROI/ROE

Simple technique , yet too often it is overlooked or seen as something for the techies. It’s not.