3 Website Analytics You Can Improve in 2 Weeks or Less

Sam Lowe
Posted by Sam Lowe on April 8, 2014

Analytics are a vital aspect to any marketing effort and especially for inbound marketing. Most marketers haven’t ever had this much quality data at their fingertips, so things can get a little overwhelming. It’s great to have a ton of data to sort through, but what if you want to try and influence some of your less desirable metrics?

You won’t be able to make changes and affect all of your metrics quickly, but there are a few you can turn from bad to better in a short(ish) time. It’s important to take action on these metrics because they can directly, and indirectly, affect some of the larger overarching metrics on your website. Take a look below and you’ll see a list of what you can do today. As always, results will vary and will heavily depend on your current amount of website traffic and site size.

Bounce Rate
Time For Results: 2-3 Weeks

Your site’s bounce rate is a measure of how often users navigate to your site and then leave after viewing only one page. If you want people to stick around, this number should be as low as possible. A high bounce rate is an indication that users aren’t finding what they want or expect once they reach your site. So, what should you do?

Right away you should take a look at your page titles and meta descriptions. These need to accurately describe what a user will see on the page once they click a link on a search engine results page (SERP). Page titles and descriptions that sound great but don’t actually represent what’s on your page will lead to higher bounce rates.

What else can you do? You can also take a look at your on-page content and re-work that if it’s a little underwhelming. This will take a serious time investment to do it right across your site. For the sake of time, I would suggest only doing this for some of your top pages that have a less-than-desirable bounce rate.

Time On Page
Time For Results: 2-3 Weeks

Old-clockWow, your site gets 50,000 visits a month? That’s awesome! Oh wait, the average time on page is only 6 seconds – that’s not good. Unless you have the fastest readers on the planet, users aren’t really absorbing your content.

The best way to address this metric is to take a look at your page titles and meta descriptions again. Honesty is the best policy when it comes to page titles and meta descriptions. Other than that, you can revise your on-page content if time permits. I realize that overhauling your content is a daunting task but if it’s really that bad there’s no other solution. Just changing meta descriptions and page titles would only be like a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound.

Conversion Rate
Time For Results: 1-2 Weeks

So let’s say you’ve got great content and some solid SEO on your site but your conversion rates on content offers are well below what you expected. If I’d do any finger-pointing at the culprit it would be at your CTAs. Just having CTAs on your site isn’t enough; they need to be placed correctly and look appealing. Crafting a great CTA is sort of an art form that’s almost impossible to nail down on the first try.

You should do a little A-B testing with your CTAs as well. Tiny variations in design and placement can affect your conversion rate. Just making something that you think looks good isn’t enough.

Take a look at where your CTAs direct traffic to, as well. All CTAs should funnel traffic to landing pages that are attractive and offer focused content. Don’t distract users with other offers on your landing pages. If you do, your conversion rate will suffer.

Time To Take Action

Now you know where to start taking action with your analytics. Every website is different, just as every industry varies. If you make some changes and nothing much happens, don’t get discouraged! Even if you make a change and the results are negative there’s a silver lining: A change of any sort means that what you’re doing is actually affecting user behavior. You just need to reevaluate what your tactics are. Now get out there and start improving your analytics!

SEO Survival Guide From Weidert Group

Topics: Search Engine Optimization, Content Marketing, Marketing Automation

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