5 key metrics you should know from Google Analytics
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
Well a nice little jolly down to London for the eCommerce Expo at Earls Court today. Generally I was surprised that I didn’t learn much new, except maybe that UK Fast have a recruitment policy that involves women who look good in hot pants http://twitpic.com/m8t5w (the girls in the picture are actually UK Fast employees and not hired in like I thought).
Not learning much can I guess be a good thing as it generally means we’re doing everything right in work. Still I attended a Google University session on analytics and I would certainly recommend Google University sessions if you get the chance to attend one. Amongst the things I took away were what the speaker said were his 5 key metrics that you should know for any eCommerce site and they’re equally applicable to normal sites.
- Bounce Rate
- % of visitors who view the product or service page
- % of visitors who exit after using the site search
- % of visitors who reach the checkout
- Conversion rate
Personally I’ve spent a bit of time looking at bounce rates and conversions rates but the one I haven’t really looked at is the number of visitors leaving after a site search.
It makes a lot of sense to be paying attention to this data, seeing what customers are looking for on your site, are they not finding it and leaving? Should you be stocking this product? Should be giving people information on that product? Is it in your store and people just aren’t finding it in your search?
There are plenty of questions you should be answering just from those 5 key analytics and all in all you can delve deeper and deeper into analyatics but I guess if you focus your time on the key 5 above you have a good place to start and get things right and then kick on to analytics nirvana!
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Hello from Russia!
Can I quote a post in your blog with the link to you?
By all means go ahead. I’m happy for people to use the content provided it is accredited properly.
i m not sure if bounce rate really helps since it is very human thing , and changing around your site based on bounce rate might be wrong .
I think bounce rate is extremely important, it shows how effective your site is at retaining visitors.
Whilst you will never get a 0% rate as there will always be people who arrive on your site accidentally or just aren’t interested a high bounce rate can be very indicative of certain problems. Are people not noticing your calls to action? Are there no calls to action? Are there error’s on pages stopping people continuing further into the site? Are there certain pages that have higher bounce rates and what are the differences between those and your pages with low bounce rates?
There are many things that can be indicated with your bounce rate figure and a low bounce rate shows a site that has content people want to read further and entices people in. It isn’t a final arbitrary indicator, blogs often have high bounce rates as people click through from RSS feeds and such with the intention of reading only the one article and then they leave. Ecommerce sites though are a good example of sites that benefit from low bounce rates, they draw people into looking at other products, reading more on the site and hopefully buying things.
The best way to test and play around is by using A/B testing and the results can be seen for themselves with increased conversions.
I think bounce rate is one of the key metrics that all web developers and business owners should understand or know. The reason this metric is so important is that it allows you to understand whether or not the entry page (ie front page) is effective as a gateway. Many websites might have fantastic information but aren’t effective.
I agree with Van regarding the bounce rate. But a great post, thanks.