Who visits your website?
[July 2009] Why do you have a website? Does it achieve that goal? How do you know?
When I discovered recently that most visitors to one of my websites, MacTips.info, arrived from a search engine, stayed less than a minute then left immediately, I was shocked.
I was shocked by every element of that short statement.
Most visitors came from search engines? 90% or more of them? What about my loyal readers?
Visitors stayed less than a minute? One minute? You can't read much in one minute.
And then most left without going any further on my website? What about all my carefully crafted, valuable articles?
The nature of my website
That particular website contains hundreds of tips for using Apple products: Macs, iPods and so on. I add a new Tip each week. As I thought about it, I realised I've created a reference archive, rather like an encyclopaedia (only not as lofty). People dip into encyclopaedias; they don't usually read them intensively.
In that case it's not too surprising that people search for information, end up at my site, read what I have to say in one article and then leave again.
They don't stay long, so I hope that means that my writing is clear and concise, and effective.
An overhaul increased visitors
Still, I wasn't happy with the stats I saw so I made some changes. In the 4 weeks after I made the changes the number of visitors increased by around 33%, and numbers have been steadily increasing ever since.
In brief, I changed the site to give visitors a broader overview of what is on offer and to more prominently list other articles that may be related to the one they were reading.
Good statistics were crucial for increasing visits to my site. They are crucial to your work too.
Statistics keep you on track
I installed the free Google Analytics on my site. It involves adding a small amount of code to every page. Google make it easy and tell you exactly what code to add and where to add it.
Google Analytics can tell you amazing detailed things about your visitors, such as how many pages they visit, how long they stay, what cities and countries they come from, how they reached your site, which pages they arrived at, and which they left from.
Google Analytics can tell you so much I could write several entire articles just listing everything.
Compare the information about your visitors with the goals of your site and you can quickly see what's working and what's not, and maybe see ways to improve what you offer.
For example: if you target Kiwis, but most visitors arrive from Australia how can you change that, or turn it to your benefit?
Use the statistics
Your website probably cost you a lot of money. But I'm afraid the costs don't stop with that initial creation. For a website to earn its keep you need to monitor visitors and tune-up the website regularly. I'm afraid you'll need to keep that web developer around a bit longer.
If your website already has a sophisticated stats program like Google Analytics installed then check the stats regularly and look for ways to improve what your website offers.
If it doesn't yet include such a package then ask your web developer to install Google Analytics. The software costs you nothing, and once installed should need no upkeep. For many well-crafted websites adding the code should be no more than 15 minutes work.
More information
Watch the Google Analytics Product Tour video for further information. Don't get too hung up on words such as 'customers', 'conversions' and 'AdWords'. Although the video assumes the viewer has a business selling products, the concepts apply equally to community organisations.
Panui tips contributed by Miraz Jordan, http://knowit.co.nz