Once you’ve got your website up and running, you will naturally be keen to know who your visitors are and how they’re engaging with your website. Attracting the kind of target market is the basic goal of any website for a variety of reasons.  The reasons can range from building the business’ prospect base, converting visitors to buyers and to keep in touch with visitors who can eventually become customers. Whether your website is for an online or offline business, measuring metrics is mandatory – only the modus operandi varies. Let us take a look at a website’s metrics – which ones should you track?

To begin with, you would certainly want to know:

• How many page views were received over a given period
• Which browser the visitor is using
• The visitor’s behaviour on the website
• How much time they spend on the site
• Which search engine they used to find your website
• Keywords and key-phrases that brought them to your site

Most of the web analytics programs like Google Analytics (a free analytics package) offer a dashboard with basic information. The latest analytics service on the block is Woopra, which is similar to Google Analytics, but offers real-time data with additional features such as live chat with site visitors. Woopra’s statistics is useful as it offers real time streaming data of even the minutest activities on the website.  Below are the most common metrics that can be measured via web analytics.

Operating system and browser

You will need to know which browsers and operating systems are being used by visitors so that your website can be optimised to their needs. Test your site with the most popular browsers and operating systems (OS).

Statistics related to referrer

Referrer statistics relate to the origin of your visitors and the pages that link to your site.

Unique visitors

This gives you an idea of the unique visitors to your site and the number of times they visited during a particular time frame.  While tracking data may not always be a 100% accurate, you can use cookies to track visitors. It is best to watch for trends rather than numbers so that you can tweak your website accordingly.

Location

Visitor location and geo tagging information helps you to know where your visitors are coming from. For businesses that are targeting a particular geographic location, this can be valuable data to design their campaigns effectively.

Entry and exit pages

Which pages do your visitors land on, and which pages do they leave from?  While a majority of websites see a lot of visitors accessing their site via the home page, it is possible for other pages to receive more visitors. These pages must be identified and designed to give visitors easy access to other pages on the website.

Link popularity

You can track links to see which external links are popular, besides tracking your internal links. It also helps you find out which areas of your page receive the maximum clicks, so that you can put vital information there.

Search engine stats

Getting search engine statistics can help you design a successful SEO campaign. When you know which search engines are sending people to your website and which pages they bring them to, you can focus your search engine optimisation efforts accordingly.  This information is available from referrer reports.

Keywords

You need to know which keywords are bringing people to your website and capitalise on them. If there are keywords you are yet to optimise for, then now is the time to do so by creating content and landing pages related to those keywords.

The idea is to structure your website and other elements of your online business to give your visitor the best experience possible, while achieving your business goals. By spending time analysing your Analytics data you can optimise your website to achieve optimal results.

 

One of the main goals of many websites is to attract visitors who convert into loyal customers.  Web usability plays a crucial role in ensuring that website visitors find what they are looking for.   If they do not find what they want, there will be no sales and worse still, they are unlikely to return. No matter how enticing the website’s design, it is usability that determines the ease with which information can be retrieved.

It is a fact that a strategically designed web site is among the most effective tools to connect with and make an impression on your target market. Since it is likely to be the first point of contact your website visitors will have with you, it is important to make sure that this marketing tool is utilized correctly. Besides business, your website can also build great customer relationships.

What website visitors expect from a website

Here is a quick look at what your website visitors expect, when they arrive on your website. They want:

• A site that is easy to navigate
• A site that loads quickly – if the visitor has a slow connection, she is not going to be happy about your site hogging all her bandwidth
• To find what they want quickly with the minimum browsing
• Your advice or answers to their questions
• Valuable content they can use or share
• To interact with you and your site
• Privacy

What can you do to ensure that your website usability satisfies the expectations of your visitors?

• Test the usability of your site with your users. This is the most important thing. Make sure all the links work and lead where they are supposed to. Test your site on the most prominent browsers to make sure it renders properly.
• Ensure that you post quality content so that people want to come back and better yet, content they would want to share with their network.
• Add the appropriate number of links within the website’s copy to help visitors navigate easily and find what they want in the shortest possible time. The navigation must be obvious, consistent and intuitive and lead to relevant pages.
• Add the search feature to each page on your site along with navigation so that your visitors can see the context while doing away with guesswork.
• Let your visitors see where they are on your site by using descriptive URLs. For example, http://www.formfunction.co.za/services/ show that they are on the services page of the FormFunction website.
• The home page link must be prominently visible on every page in the same location.
• Include a site map which users can click to see all the pages on the site.
• If visitors have landed on a page other than the home page, let them know which page they are on and its location in relation to the structure of the site.
• Preferably every page on the site should be no more than three clicks from the home page.
• If a page on your website shows up as a 404 error, create a custom page that can bring your visitors back to the site.
• Keep your website elements looking consistent across the entire website.
• One direction, preferably vertical scrolling is best.
• Last but not least, your contact page must offer clear details about your business.

Make it easy for website visitors to find their way around and they will come back often. These days, it is also important to ensure that your website is compatible with mobile screens.  Keep testing and monitoring to check what works for your site in particular.  What specific steps are you taking to ensure website usability? We would love to hear from you.