This morning when I got to work, the lovely Sarah Blake, guru of all things analytics, sent to my inbox this fabulous list of tips for analysing pages on your website. I briefly considered adding to them and decided that they are perfect just the way they are.
Use Web analytics data to identify problematic pages
Instead of using overviews or dashboards, use reports which help you to drill down into the data. One of the best ways to do this is using the landing pages report and segmenting this by traffic source. Of particular interest would be search traffic landing pages with high bounce rates, for example.
Segment and compare your data
Different users behave differently, so lumping all the data together won’t really give you an accurate picture. Some easy ways to segment and analyse information is by traffic source (brand search traffic vs non-brand search traffic, for example) or by visitor type (returning vs new visitors for example).
Use single page analysis tools
They’re not free, but they give you an additional layer of data. Crazy Egg and ClickTale are two great examples.
Focus on pages that matter
Using your Web analytics and your brain, focus your analysis on high traffic pages and important conversion pages. You should be looking at pages which a lot of your visitors see, as optimising those pages will impact a higher percentage of your visits. Also focus on pages which are material to conversions, such as checkout or product pages.
Where possible, collect data on similar pages.
On ecommerce sites, product pages tend to have similar layouts. You can collect behaviour across pages which have a similar template in order to have more data to analyse and work from.
If you want a few more gems of insight into the best way to maximise your use of analytics, sign up for Sarah’s Google Analytics workshop in Cape Town on the 17th November. There are only 30 spots, so you better hurry!
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