Analyse Web Data To Enhance User Experience
April 28th, 2009 // 2:24 pm @ Fox
There are many insights that can be gained by analysing your web statistics regularly, but there is a difference between analysing the data and just looking at the reports. Looking at the reports confirms that they exist. Analysing them is what you do to try to understand the users of your website:
- what they do,
- where they go,
- where did they come from,
- what do they want.
For this post, we are just looking at the amount of time a user spends on your website, the number of pages they viewed and the bounce rate.
The majority of web analytical software will give you a report on these three items. The three tie into together to give you a basic idea of your site’s relevance and appeal.
A user is likely to enter your site from any content page. Don’t always assume they will enter from the homepage. With people becoming more savvy with search engines, a search term could lead a user to any part of your site. If they exit at the same page without going anywhere else, then they have bounced.
All sites are different and the number of pages a user visits and the amount of time they spend will 
‘depend on what is on your site. If your site is a content-rich site with lots of informative articles and interesting posts, then you would expect to see the user go to several pages and spend at least a few minutes on the site.
If your users spend a few seconds on your site and only visit the entrance page before bouncing even though you have a content-rich site, then it is time to look at why. Either the site is not relevant to what they were looking for, or the site is not appealing enough for them to want to read, or there is too much text which can appear overwhelming, or a number of other factors.
Put yourself in your user’s shoes.
- Does the site have immediate appeal?
- Is it immediately clear what the web page is about?
- Is there too much text that makes the page look heavy to read?
- What else might contribute to a high bounce rate?
As mentioned earlier, users can enter a site at any page. The homepage may be very appealing with clear descriptive sentences of what the site is about, but are the other pages up to scratch?
Are there stand-out headings that describe what the page is about? Headings catch the eye of the user. If the text is heavy, try breaking it up with more space, add sub-headings, bullet lists, a graphic or two and try to make the page more appealing.
If you feel the page meets all the right criteria and yet there is still a high bounce rate, perhaps the site is not relevant to what the user is seeking. Look at the source of the referral. Where did the user come from? Was it through a search engine? Was it from a link you placed on a friend’s site, or a link from a directory? Was it from an advertisement you placed?
Having links all over the Internet to your site may sound like a good idea at the time, but the key is relevance. Having links from related sites or complementary sites is a better idea than having a link on a totally unrelated site. Alternatively, maybe the text on the link needs to be reviewed and rewritten to be more descriptive of what the site is about or what it sells.
Don’t put a high bounce rate in the ‘brand awareness’ bucket.
A friend was telling me that she placed an ad on a well known social media site and had lots of click-throughs. When we looked at the web analytics for those clicks, it showed that around 95% of the users that clicked through were on the site for around one second and bounced. Hmmm … This ad either was not targeted to the right audience, or my friend is a victim of click-fraud.
Think of the web data as user feedback. It is unsolicited information that you can use to enhance the user experience.
Category : Web Analytics & blog