You’ve probably heard of companies that have effectively doubled their traffic just by changing the colour of one of their buttons or the blog that increased profits by 10x only by checking a heat map. So why aren’t those miracles happening to your website, too? In this blog, we’ll cover three analytical metrics that are often misunderstood and are probably costing your business money as we speak.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is a pretty simple metric—the percentage of single interaction visits to your site. When someone visits your site and instantly gets out of town, they’ve “bounced”.
Why it’s Important: In general, if people are bouncing too frequently, it’s a good indication that they aren’t having a good time or can’t find what they’re looking for.
How Marketers Get it Wrong: There are many reasons why a user might bounce, and not all of them are bad. What if they visited your site and instantly found what they were looking for? Isn’t that a good thing? Many inexperienced marketers might see a big bounce rate and start fixing a site that was actually working well already!
How to Improve: Your bounce rate could be heavily affected by your web design. Improve you load times, user interface, and calls to action. A great web design team will fix most of your issues ASAP.
Channel Groupings
If you’re using Google Analytics (you’re using Google Analytics, right?), then you’ve probably heard of Channel Groupings. It shows how visitors find your website. A simple overview from your dashboard will show you Social, Email, Referral, Organic, etc.
How Marketers Get it Wrong: Channel Groupings are a great way to get a vague feel for things, but aren’t a very telling way to dig deep into your conversions; for example, you might be getting great social statistics but are your images on Pinterest doing better than your blogs shared on LinkedIn?
How to Improve: Using custom channel groupings based on the experience you wish your customers to have is a must. That’s where an experienced marketer makes their money. Campaigns often have a purpose. For example, prospecting. Custom groupings will tell the full story, letting you know exactly what is contributing to your success and what you can improve on.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is the rate at which visitors accomplish a specified goal on your site.
How Marketers Get it Wrong: One problem with conversion rate is that marketers believe it’s the be all end all. Sure, conversion rate optimization (CRO) might take your conversions from 1% to 3%, but if you aren’t building a brand and driving traffic, it won’t make you much in the end.
How to Improve: Here are a few misconceptions about CRO and how to improve:
- CRO is a holistic practice. You’ve got to focus on what’s best for your industry—not just best practices.
- Split testing is mandatory! Continually test to produce the best results.
- Longer form content is still good. CrazyEgg increased their conversions by 360% just by extending their homepage!
Analyzing and adapting is what separates the most successful businesses from the rest. These three metrics are often misunderstood and it costs businesses money every day. Improve them and you’ll improve your business.
If a professional team that researches, analyzes, and manages your online campaigns is something that your company needs, then contact Canada’s top rated digital marketing agency, BlueHat Marketing.
