A little over a year ago I set out to launch a project. For months I would do everything in my power to work on anything else under the sun. The project scared me. There was no client. There was no one else to blame if things went wrong. And frankly, it was too close to my heart and my purpose.
Friends and associates stepped forward on every front. Without them I never would have been able to make this project see the light of day. Some designed logos for me. Others built the back end. Some stepped forward to help me on my first mini doc for the new site.
I wanted to document, speak with and understand the most passionate people I could find, whether they be artists, parents, circus performers or gardeners. I wanted to find and understand these people. I wanted to know what it was like to be them and share their motivations, tools and outlook with the rest of us.
Craphammer was a fun and key part of my professional life that has been dormant for far too long. So now it is time for me to let go and turn my attentions to the mostpassionate.ca.
I hope you will take a minute to stop by and check it out. I'll save a place for you there.
This is an ongoing series titled, "Google Analytics Magic." In part one I showed how and why to create my favorite Google Analytics (GA) report, a customized keywords bounce report with drill down. This report helps to identify where search engines like Google or Bing are leading people to pages on your site that don't answer their query. This is quite often low hanging fruit for improving your site and driving higher engagement and conversion.
In part two, I will be answering some of the questions people had and then showing how to use advanced segmentation in Google Analytics (GA). [edited]
Adam asked, "One request I would like to suggest is a "what now?" step or suggestions after identifying that a high bounce rate was actually caused by people not finding the right information. [...] I suppose my best options would be to either write a specific article based on those keywords, or to include some reference links to other sites that have info specific to a user's search."
This is dead on, Adam.
The line of thinking is to first determine whether it would be appropriate to rewrite or update the page to make it more relevant to visitors. Then I like to explore how to get the search traffic to point to more appropriate pages on the site. Below I outline three approaches to this end. Think of these as tools in your toolkit. You may use just one, or you may use all three as best fits.
1: I would pull a content report and if the page in question shows an equally high bounce rate overall (not just from search), I would consider rewriting this page. Is there a way to expand the page to address and include the search terms being used? In some cases it is not appropriate or possible to rewrite the page. A page about your product or service is likely not a good candidate to be rewritten unless the search terms relate to your product/service.
2: Can we create a callout box that is featured above the fold with links to other pages on the site that better address the search terms being used? Visitors to the page can then easily click to get to a page on the site that best meets their interests or needs. I would often create these links using Google's Campaign URL Builder as I want to know at a quick glance which links in the callout box people are clicking on. These clicks will then appear in the Traffic Sources | Campaigns report. Note that it's not necessary to create Campaign URLs as anyone clicking on a link will be a second click on your site. They will no longer be be a bounce which will help drive down your bounce rate and get people to the content they are looking for. So you will see the bounce rate dropping if the links are working you just won't be able to easily see which links are working best.
3: Callout boxes work really well in many cases, but it doesn't fix the problem that people are going from a search engine to a page only to have to click again to get to the page they really want. This extra step will always cause some attrition of visitors versus getting people directly to the appropriate page in the first place. This brings me into the realm of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The question is why the search engine isn't directing people to your other page in the first place. Is it findable by the search engines? Could you rewrite the other page with more of the terms people are searching for? I recommend working with an SEO specialist. Good news is you have identified the problem. Fixing it is just a matter of effort and resources.
I am going to be experimenting with Clicky on a project with Eric. I do like their ability to differentiate between a quick bounce and someone spending time on a page. That said, I would still want to run a report like I outlined in Part One and look for disconnects between search terms and page content resulting in a bounce.
Fred asks, "Did it Sean. Thanks. I'd love for you to blog on how a small business should be using GA and how often."
Stay tuned for part three where I will do just that. I'll also explore a simplified model for determining key measures for your organization.
Keep the questions coming!
Using Advanced Segmentation in Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) offers a number of quick and powerful methods to understand what is driving increased traffic to your site. In the video below, I show you how to use Advanced Segmentation to do just that. It sounds complex, but it really isn't. It's one of the most powerful and easy to use features in GA.
A big shout out to Soundstreams Canada for letting me use them as a guinea pig. If you are looking for great, one-of-a-kind concerts in Toronto, I can't recommend them enough.
This is an ongoing series titled, "Google Analytics Magic." This is part one where I will explore my favorite custom report - a customized keywords bounce report. In part two, I will go on to answer some of the questions sent in from this post and then explore how to use the Advanced Segmentation feature in Google Analytics.
I've been having a lot of fun in Sparked. I recently offered to share some of my favorite Google Analytics tips and reports with an organization there. I then figured this might be useful to a wider audience, so this crazy blog post was born.
BloomingBetty has agreed to let me use their data as an example. BloomingBetty is a new blog focused on defining success for women. I highly recommend checking it out. Full disclosure: Lori is a good friend and I have been advising her pro bono.
What I love about Google Analytics, beyond being free in most cases, is that advanced insights can be found without having to be a programmer or even an analytics expert.
My Favorite Report
Anyone using Google Analytics is likely familiar with the dashboard. It's the default view.
The key to Google Analytics is to always go at least a little bit deeper than the default view. But where to go can be daunting.
In this post, I'm going to share one of my favorite reports.
Every expert tells us that the reports we choose need to be based on the objectives and key measures that matter to us. I totally agree and I shouldn't have a favorite report, but I do.
It is one of my first "go to" reports when I start working with any new client.
It is a customized Keywords report. I'll show how to create a customized keywords report at the end of this article. First I will start by exploring the standard "Keywords" report already available to everyone in Google Analytics.
I get to the standard Keywords report by clicking on "Traffic Sources" in the left hand nav and then selecting "Keywords".
A report much like the following one should appear.
(click to enlarge any screenshot)
The Keywords report shows the top search terms being used to get people to my site and what happens, in aggregate, once they get there.
I can see, for example, that people typing "blooming betty pike" into a search engine to get to this blog spent significantly more time on the site than people who typed in "anna kinworthy". I can also get a feel for how many pages of the site our visitors are averaging and the percent of new visits versus returning traffic.
But what I often look at is the bounce rate on this report. It is in the final column.
Google says the bounce rate is "the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors."
This is actually misleading. The first part is correct. It is the percentage of single-page visits. A bounce rate or 93% means that 93% of people looked at only the one page before leaving the site.
A lot of people, Google help included, think this is a bad thing. But what if they found what they were looking for?
Just because someone came to the site, found what they were looking for, and then left the site is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, you could argue that in many cases this was a successful engagement!
Let's say that my friend Janet wants to know the hours of a local small business. She searches for the business in Google and then clicks through to the page with the information she wanted. She jots down the information and closes the browser. She will show up as a bounce in the report but she is happy. The business should also be happy.
Before getting back to the Keywords report, I want to look at my least favorite report for looking at bounce rates. It is titled the "Top Landing Pages" report. I get to this report by clicking on "Content" in the left hand nav and then clicking on "Top Landing Pages."
In the screenshot above it would look like there are a number of pages with very high bounce rates. And most firms would focus on fixing these pages.
But what if all these people found what they were looking for and then left happy?
What's missing is the context around the visit. If I only knew why they came to the site in the first place, I could then make a strong educated guess as to whether or not the page they visited had the information they were looking for.
This is where my favorite report comes in. Let's head on back over to the Keywords report.
On the left I can see all the search terms people typed into a search engine that brought them to the website. This is the context I was searching for! On the right, I see the average number of pages visited, the time on site and the Bounce Rate.
I now have significant insight into know why they came here (search term they used to get to the site on the left). But did they get to the page with the information they were looking for? If they did, then a high bounce rate may not be an overly bad thing.
This is where the standard Keywords report fails us.
Sadly, clicking on the search term on the left will not drill down and show the pages they were brought to.
This is where my custom Keywords report differs. It lets me drill down. Other than that, it looks almost identical.
The only addition is the first item "(not set)" which means there was no keyword - it is reporing on site activity that did not originate from a search engine. So we can ignore this line for the most part.
The drilldown is the missing link. If I click on any of the search terms on the left, I can now drill down to find out what pages these people visited as a result of their search engine query.
In the graph above, I highlighted the third item ("sheryl sandberg...") because I noticed it had a bounce rate of over 90%.
If I click on this search term, I can see the pages on the site these people were sent to.
Look at that. They were searching for "sheryl sandberg" and were sent to our article on Sheryl Sandberg. They all got the information they needed and were looking for. And so 93% of them then went on about their day.
So I would check this search term off my list and continue looking. I would look for pages where I have higher bounce rates and I am sending people to a page that does NOT answer the search terms used.
This report will identify some of the big, easy fixes that can have significant positive impacts on traffic and visitors. Someone not finding what they were looking for and leaving the site is a big time missed opportunity if I truly did offer what they wanted. I had them but they were on the wrong page.
I'm sure there are some questions so please fire away in the comments. Ot's really hard to present this in blog format.
Here is a video that shows how to build your own custom Keywords report.
(You will want to watch this full screen in hi def)
For those of you proficient with Google Analytics, here is a link to my my drilldown keywords report: http://bit.ly/fM9Dh0
In my next post I will look at real-time segmentation. But let me know if there's another area people are interested in!
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