On a day to day basis web analytics are a window in to what has been happening on a given website. Data generated by the user is reported in very simple terms and decisions can be made around that data based on the behavioural patterns of users. Different websites even if they appear to be exactly the same and in the same sector can throw up different search reporting trends and it is in this analysis that the power of analytical data comes in to its own.
With a first page ranking on a generic term such as “Mumbles Hotels” or “Mumbles” the user is at stage one of their search and although reasonably narrowed down to Hotels in Mumbles they might be open to 3 or even 5 star accommodation and are likely to look through multiple pages before they find their desired outcome.
Take the 6 search terms below mumbles, the mumbles, China China Swansea, mumbles Swansea, Mumbles Wales and mumbles hotels. Each tells a very different story about that user’s interest in the content based on the data available.
The keyword “Mumbles Hotels” is a reasonably generic term although the user has narrowed down a place and a product they still have the type of product such as 3 or 5 star hotels. It is fair to say that user would look through a variety of hotels listed on the website before they made their decision. It appears given the level of page views for that term at 7.46 per visit that is the case. Also note the very low bounce rate at 8.24%. So 92.76% of users look at more than 1 page of content on that search term.
Bounce rate is a very good indicator of how users react to the content offering when initially put in front of them. That search term would also suggest that the user is in “buying mode” and is thinking about conducting a transaction so giving them “call to actions” to send the hotels an enquiry would be a good idea on this content.
This shows the top keywords and associated data driving traffic to Mumbles.co.uk
The keyword “china china Swansea” (the name of a Chinese restaurant) gives a very different insight in to those particular users’ intentions. The low page views per visit at 2.18 suggests a very short visit and from the average time at 56 seconds that is true. The bounce rate is the highest in the list likewise the percentage of traffic that is a new visitor.
When the page is analysed the intentions of the user become clear. The page in question is a listings page for the restaurant and contains information like address and telephone number for reservations.
China China had a very poor launch strategy when the restaurant was opened and took over 6 months for any listings to appear in the likes of Yellow Pages or Yell.com. The listings on Mumbles.co.uk have been online since day one of the restaurant opening and were indexed by Google shortly after.
Being first with information is a helpful step in ranking well in any search engine: industry leaders will often have information first and Google will reward with good listings. The search engines are also in competition with each other after all if the user consistently finds more up to date information else where there is the potential for them to swap search engines.
Even different search engines will return a different type of user. This shows Google, although driving vastly more traffic to Mumbles.co.uk, users from Yahoo are far more engaged with the content and look at 21% more pages than an average Google user. Yahoo also delivers traffic which does not bounce as much as Google.
Understanding users and how they are interacting with content allows for informed decisions about potential strategy changes such as content or more relevant links around the content. For example with a restaurant page on Swansea.info a SQL query is run which generates 6 restaurants underneath the listing so it is easy for the user to move onto related content, the more targeted the options the more likely they are to click on it. This also gave a great opportunity to develop a good internal linking strategy on Swansea.info around the restaurants channel.
Giving users related content to generate page views is completely the opposite of websites which operate on a conversion basis (CPA – cost per acquisition). The last thing a CPA business model wants is for users to be distracted from the goal, usually financial (also known as the conversion funnel) so the closer the user comes to the end result, the less options are available to navigate away
