Using website statistics successfully
What’s the first step you should take if you are considering a new site design, or a refresh of what you currently have? How do you know what you should keep from an existing design and what you should scrap?
Keeping things in Beta
The beauty of working in a digital world is that almost anything can be changed if needed, without too much trouble. With the right team around you, your site can be adapted to fit with trends and customer feedback (when appropriate), which is essential if you want to keep things fresh.
It can be easy to slip in to the idea that once your site has gone live “that’s it” until your next re-design. This doesn’t have to be the case. Your website should work hard for your brand, and if its not performing as well as anticipated, this needs to be addressed. Even if your site is performing well, could it do better?
Using analytics stats to inform design
Site stats are often misused or not used to their full potential. It’s very easy to get stuck in the habit of looking over your site stats, only acting upon them when some sort of disaster happens, or celebrating when you get a surge of conversions. But what about the rest of the time when things are just ticking along?
Your site stats can tell you a lot about your site’s users and what they are looking for, which you can use to your advantage. Are your most popular pages the ones you expect? Make the most of the pages that receive the most traffic and capitalise on their popularity by tailoring their content to fit with the journey those users have taken.
Where do your visitors come from?
You can learn a lot about how to develop a page or website category by looking at where most of its visitors come from, for instance, if one page gets a lot of visitors entering from a referral link investigate where that link has come from and find out the context in which your site is mentioned. If you can make the page fit with the expectations users following the link will have, you stand to improve your user experience in that area, potentially increasing conversions and encouraging positive brand perceptions.
A link like this needs to be protected – keep the page URL the same, and if you really need to change it, send a friendly email to the site linking to you asking them to update their link.
A or B?
Consider the potential of A – B testing (also known as split testing) to help you refine your key pages. What would happen if you changed the colour of your checkout button? What would happen if you called your page on rock t shirts, band t shirts instead? With a relatively small effort you can test various small changes to your site and measure the difference they make. Use the results as an ongoing supply of information to base future design changes on. Several small changes could make significant differences to conversion rates over time.
The data from A – B testing can be used a basis to consider further, more in depth user testing that could look at the site as a whole.
Spend time with your data…
…it can put you in touch with your users. Carrying out lots of eye tracking or other user testing all the time is practical for very few sites. For everyone else, a good understanding of their website stats is essential to guide you through the time when you cannot run more formal tests. Most users of your site will never get in touch with you and tell you whats wrong (or right) with your site. Its up to you to find this information out, and analytics/site stats can help you see the problems that need fixing.
Pages with unexpectedly high exit rates or bounce rates should be paid particular attention. Discover the paths your users take though your site and see if they could benefit from adding pages/information or removing things?
Think together
Get the members of your team talking about your user’s journey when you get site stats reports, not just how many conversions you achieved or how many visitors. Consider the deeper information these statistics provide and share your ideas – you may come up with some great new ideas!
Learn more:
Usability testing
Eye tracking
Customer journey mapping
About the author
Bonny is passionate about creating great user journeys that improve conversion rates. She is an advocate of ethical SEO, and loves measuring website stats. Bonny spends her free time sewing, designing fabric and drawing silly pictures. Email Bonny, or call +44 (0)117 946 3930
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