Web Analytics

Many website owners these days use some sort of visitor tracking on their websites, and one of the most popular of these is Google Analytics.

If you’ve not yet heard of Google Analytics, it’s basically one of many tools the giant search engine has made available for free to webmasters. It allows you to track interesting data about the visitors to your site, such as the number of visitors, how they got to your website and much more.

So much more in fact, that many people don’t even realise it’s possible to track some of the data. A few examples of Google Analytics’ more advanced features:

• E-Commerce Tracking – in my opinion one of the most valuable features of Google Analytics if you have an online shop, e-commerce tracking allows you to see exactly how much each visitor to your site is worth.
• Site Search – if you have a search facility on your website, Google Analytics gives you the option of tracking what visitors are looking for on your website. This then allows you to make much more informed changes to your website that ensure it is working as efficiently as possible.
• Visitor Filtering – if you’re worried about skewing your analytics data by visiting your own website from home or work computer, Google Analytics actually has an option to ignore certain visitors or groups of visitors.
• External Link Tracking – by simply adding a small piece of code to external links on your page, you can see how often each one is clicked on by your visitors.

Rik
Head Of Web Development

With the advent of improved web technologies and faster internet speeds, the one thing you often see implemented on new websites these days is a flash video of some sort, usually an introduction to the site or a brief summary of how the site works. It all sounds good on the surface, but does it affect your site’s usability and your search engine optimisation efforts?

You may think a video playing on your website will help to increase conversions, or keep them on your site that little bit longer. However, evidence actually suggests a video can have adverse effects on your site, depending on how it’s implemented. Let’s say you decide to make your introductory video autoplay when a user first gets to your site – you might be surprised to hear that this makes a lot of people leave the site immediately. Analytics on one website that did this shows a spike in the homepage’s bounce rate from below 30% to around the 70% mark. That’s 7 out of 10 users leaving your site just because of a video! They might be in an office and so the sudden burst of sound could attract unwanted attention, or perhaps they are one of the substantial number of people still on a low internet connection who simply don’t want to wait for the page and video to load.

To be fair, there is a fairly simple compromise. Make sure the video doesn’t play automatically, and you shouldn’t notice a huge difference in your bounce rate. This change was made on the website already mentioned before, and their bounce rate quickly dropped right back down again to an acceptable level.

It’s still worth keeping a close eye on your analytics, as it can be interesting to see what the right presentation in a video can do for your conversion rates.

Rik
SEO Programmer