Photo from Pro-Zak's Flickr Stream
As you know, I'm working on a screencast about Google Analytics and have been collecting real life nonprofit examples. I've also been using my own blog data as a sandbox for running and interpreting reports.
I put a query out on NTEN Affinity Group of Nonprofit Webmasters. I asked them if they would be willing to share any screen captures from some key reports (as suggested by Google Analytics Evangelist Kaushik) and what they learned:
Key Report #1: Referring Search Terms From Search Engines The report that tells you which search phrases people are using to find your site tells you a lot about your users.
Key Report #2: Referring URLs
Look at the report that tells you which Web sites are sending you traffic. Does this correspond to your expectations?Key Report #3: Content Popularity
It's essential to view the list of Top 10 (or 15) most popular pages on your site. "Knowing what content is being consumed can lead you to so many insights," Kaushik says. "What are people coming to my Web site for? Are the things that I want to promote actually the things that people are looking at?"Key Report #4: Percent of Visitors Who Visit the Home Page This metric often shocks site owners. "They think that everyone sees the homepage, so they put their maximum energies and promotion there." But since search engines display a site's internal pages, most users enter a site far from the home page.
Key Report #5: Site Overlay
Wouldn't you love it if you could open your site and see exactly where people are clicking? With the Site Overlay report you can. It displays your actual pages — just as they look to users — with a click level indicator next to each link. It shows the number of people who click on each link.Key Report #6: Site Bounce Rate
The Bounce Rate report reveals the number of visitors who stayed just a few seconds. These are the people who came to your site but didn't engage. In short, your bounce rate is your failure rate.
I got one response from Larry Velez who works with a company named Sinu While he isn't using Google Analytics, he shared an analytics screen capture and a story about traffic referrals. We had quick email back and forth and he gave me permission to blog or rather their marketing director David Owen did and called Larry a genuis. (I agree)
Larry told me about the what they learned from the results:
- Our blog brought in traffic, we thought it was just fun to
do
- Search queries we never thought of were leading to
us
- Our traffic is pretty constant regardless of marketing
efforts (seems like it takes a lot to make the needle move)
- Our existing customers are the biggest visitors to our
site
- Proper HTML coding makes a huge difference in Google rankings
Larry notes, "As to how looking at the numbers and thinking about it has affected our online marketing decisions – it has actually made us question the value of many traditional marketing efforts. The only things that seem to move the needle on our traffic are our real-world relationships. But we don’t sell hardware or software and are more a long term relationship company. So maybe all the ad-buy, affiliate program, SEO stuff may not apply to us."
I asked about what he discovered in looking at the search query referrals (what people type into search engine that gets them to click to the site). He mentioned that it has given them some ideas for blog content and refined their marketing messaging about their services. I asked him for three examples:
NYC cab cost per minute
- This led to a blog entry about a conversation here in the office where people here were trying to figure out if there was an optimal speed to be going in a NYC cab based on their rate sheet.
Greenhill SAVP
- This led to a blog post where we had written about a local VC pitch contest we won
What does the IT department do?
- We just laughed at this one. No one understands the role of IT departments and we are making it simple to understand by aligning incentive structures with the organization.
Larry comments sent me into my blog's search keyword referrals report and also found a connection to Taxi Cabs ... you won't get it unless you were a music conservatory student like me ..
That's an old joke about the guy who asked a NYC taxi driver that question, and cabby replied, "Practice, Practice, Practice." That search term lead to this post "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" The post was about Powerpoint Presentation delivery techniques. The bounce rate (or failure rate) for this search term is pretty high. So, it is telling me that I need to think more carefully about what words go into the titles of my blog post and those should be more closely related to my content focus and the type of people I want to attract.
I'd love to know about your search engine keyword referral stories! Tell me a keyword search referral that you found in your analytics and how you improved your marketing, web site, or blog as a result?
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