Looking the Other Way:
The Metrics I am Not Reviewing (At least not yet.)
Let’s face it – there is a wealth of information available
through Google Analytics, but for the purposes of studying the traffic of this blog,
not all of these statistics are important. For example, this isn’t a business
site, so there is no need for me to use the eCommerce analytic features. Conversions
on a website are usually pretty important, but conversion tracking generally
refers to the conversion from traffic to sales or the conversion from an AdWord
campaign to a site visitor. For the purpose of this blog, I am not investing in
AdWords, I am not selling anything, and I do not have any whitepapers or other
downloads. I am also not creating goals
just yet, although this may be something I would like to revisit in the future.
It’s worth noting, that the AdWords tab has a lot of very
cool tracking features like campaigns, keywords, matched search queries, Day
Parts (which provides information about visitor behavior based on AdWords
traffic during various hours of the day and days of the week), placements,
keyword positions and TV ads. I hope to be able to use all of these features
some day, but today is not that day.
Traffic Sources
To drive traffic to this blog, I posted links to select
postings through my Twitter
account, Scoop.it page, StumbleUpon,
the MarketingProfs page on
Facebook and Pinterest. With all of this, only 24 percent of my blog traffic is
considered “referral” traffic – or traffic coming from other sites. Unfortunately,
I did not get any traffic as a result of my posts on Twitter, Facebook or
Pinterest, but I did get a few hits from Scoop.it, Stumbleupon.com and my
classmate Kayla’s
blog. (Thanks Kayla!)
The majority of my blog traffic, 72 percent, is considered “direct”
traffic, meaning the visitors arrived at my site by using the direct URL. From
this, I can surmise that 72 percent of my site traffic is coming from my
classmates (or myself), who arrive at my blog through the direct link I posted
on the discussion board.
Even more disappointing, only 4 percent of my traffic is
considered “organic” meaning they arrived at my blog through a keyword search.
Interestingly, the search was for a comparison on Facebook advertising vs.
Google AdWords – which brought the visitor to this June 11 blogpost comparing the two forms of advertising.
I hope that I will be able to increase the amount of organic
search traffic as I continue to add content to this blog. Keywords are an
indicator of what people are looking to find on your site. If I had a reference
point on keywords and was using this site for business purposes, I might use
the highest ranking keywords to purchase a Google AdWords campaign. Keywords
can also help in adjusting content, since keywords with high bounce rates may
indicate that you’re not meeting the needs of the reader. Then again, with
blogs, people may read the post they searched for and “bounce,” so it may not
necessarily be a measurement of quality.
AUDIENCE
This may just be my favorite tab (right now at least) in the
whole Google Analytic platform. There are a lot of neat features under the “Audience”
tab including:
- Demographics: language and location
- Behavior: New vs. returning visitors; frequency and recency; engagement
- Technology: Browser & operating system; network
- Mobile: Overview and devices
- Visitor Flow
Demographics
I learned that the majority of my traffic is coming from the
United States (no shocker there), but I did get one hit from Australia and
another from the United Kingdom. Within my domestic traffic, I had visitors
from six of the 50 states including Pennsylvania (my home state), Kansas, New
Jersey, West Virginia, California and Florida.
Behavior
Over 80 percent of my traffic is considered “new,” which can
be good or bad depending on how you look at it. On one hand, I have been moderately
successful at driving new traffic to my blog, but on the other, nobody is
coming back. My audience also less engaged than I had hoped, with a bounce rate
of 64 percent. Surprisingly, the average number of pages per visit (3.6) is
relatively high as is the average visit duration of 4:37 minutes, but there is definite
room for improvement.
Admittedly, I don’t post as often as regular bloggers and I could
be doing more to cultivate a following. In a recent interview for a Copyblogger
podcast, author Seth Godin (whose blog was ranked number one on the list of Best
Business Blogs of 2011 by Strategist News)
offers the following four tips for building a fan base:
- Earn Attention
- Tell Your Story
- Connect with Your Fans
- Take Your Time
According to Seth “Marketing is the first thing we do, not
the last. Build virality and connection and remarkability into your product or
service from the start and then the end gets a lot easier." (Smith, 2012).
Technology/Mobile
Although I do not find the technology data as useful as some
other bits of information, it’s worth noting that the largest percentage of my
site visitors use Firefox, followed by Internet Explorer and the Android
Browser. Windows is the top Operating System, followed by Macintosh, with the
Android operating system coming in third. I thought there may be a way to view
how my blog renders in each of the browsers (which would be valuable), but if
that’s an option, I can’t seem to find it. Only 10 percent of my audience accessed
my blog through a mobile device.
Visitor Flow
This feature can be extremely useful in determining how
visitors travel through your website. According to the Google blog the goal of
Flow Visualization is to “help marketers and analysts better optimize their
visitor experience by presenting the ways that visitors flow through their
sites in an intuitive and useful way.” (Mui, 2011).
Just in tracking the small amount of available data, I can
see where people entered, where they dropped off, and what pages led viewers to
other pages. This type of information is crucial to understanding what’s
working and what improvements are necessary. Below is a screenshot of my
visitor flow.
The quantity and depth of information available is almost
overwhelming. I look forward to continuing my exploration – and to using my new
findings to help drive traffic and make improvements to my blog.
Smith, C. (2012, June 4). Seth Godin On Building Your
Fanbase - hypebot. hypebot. Retrieved June 25, 2012, from http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/06/seth-godin-on-building-your-fanbase.html/
Mui, P. (2011, October 19). Introducing Flow Visualization: visualizing
visitor flow. Analytics Blog. Retrieved June 25, 2012, from http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/10/introducing-flow-visualization.html
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