This weeks SEO secrets blog, looks at behavior flow. Knowing how your website’s visitors use your website is often an over looked part of web design. Too often, I see clients come to us with higher visitor numbers and wanting more, but without optimising how the current user base is using the website. Making a few simple tweaks, and working out how your website is being used, is often a cost effective way to increase ROI (return on investment) in a short time frame.
One of the easiest ways to find out how your site is being used is also free: Google Analytics. When you log into Google analytics, it shows a summary of bounce rates, page views, etc; while this information is useful, you can garner much more information by delving into the many sub menus that are on offer. One of these is Behavioural Flow, which allows you to see how your pages are performing individually. This in turn lets you see what pages may need tweaking in design so that you can get the most out of your current visitor base.
For example, in the screen capture below we can see immediately that this site has a big discrepancy between landing pages bounce rates (or drop offs.).
You can see the discrepancy between the landing pages when it’s an internal page at 73.5%, versus the home page at 29%. If you can make changes to the internal pages so that the drop-off rate is reduced to 29%, you automatically get more client interaction from 3-4 more visitors out of every 10. This would mean more visitor interaction and more potential sales for limited extra cost. Simply by making the most out of you current visitor base, you could potentially double your sale without attracting any more visitors.
Better onsite statistics also help your site rank more highly in its target niche, as Google notices that your site has a lower bounce rate, indicating user satisfaction. So not only do you get more from your current client base, it is a great way to improve your site search engine rankings, thus giving you added benefits.
Designing and launching a website is just the first step in making your business and website successful. You must constantly monitor its performance to ensure you get the best results from it. Reviewing content and visitor interaction is an ongoing job, and is a vital component of any site search engine optimisation strategy.