When work starts getting busy it can be beneficial to take a step back and evaluate how to prioritize your web analytics. This will greatly benefit your organization’s understanding of visitors’ interests, behaviors, and, most importantly, their intentions. Regardless of your organization’s speed of business, it is important to review web analytics consistently to ensure you are reaching yearly website goals. Here are some starting point tips for prioritizing your web analytics.
When your organization is busy, try to focus on simple and attainable objectives you/the team can implement. Some examples may include:
1. Identify entry pages
Create a report to identify the most popular “entry pages” into your website. Understanding the origin of your visitor, creating content to match their interests, and providing easy navigation are critical to ensure a low bounce rate. By improving the top entry pages to match the intended visitor’s interest, the organization fosters a stronger engagement with the user. If you are running a holiday-specific campaign for example, you could consider optimizing your landing pages to ensure your visitors find what they want.
2. Group similar pages
Evaluate your website by grouping similar pages to each other and review each group’s objective. Are your visitors’ actions matching up with what the web team wanted or hoped for? Analyze the top pages of each group and identify if the visitor journey correlates to your organization’s objectives. Creating a clear route within each group towards the objective ensures visitors are finding what they seek.
3. Compare traffic sources
Segment your analytics data by external referrals and compare the traffic each source generates to your website. By monitoring your multi-channel marketing efforts, you’ll see exactly what advertisements your visitors click and also deliver your organization the greatest gross profit. You’ll also better understand the channels that your visitors prefer. Be sure your organization’s website analytics tool tracks all clicks related to your marketing and website objectives - if not, what’s the point?
These suggestions are not exclusive and each organization will have different focuses, goals, and internal programs implemented throughout the year. This is a starting point to understanding your web analytics data and provides answers and suggestions to your department’s website objectives.
Download the guide: "Web Analytics - Where to Begin".
