How To Quickly Find Your Websites Weaknesses Using Easy GA Reports
Posted September 1, 2016
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You’ve developed the best website in your field. You did your homework and hired one of the best SEO companies out there and paid more than enough for advertising, but you’re still not getting the traffic you thought you would. Visitors may come and go, but they’re not spending the time on your site you’d like them to.
Now you have questions. Why are visitors leaving your site so quickly? At which point are they leaving? What can you do to improve your site and solve the problem? Luckily, Google Analytics has the answers you’re looking for.
There’s a lot of information out there about GA reports. There’s no need to spend days reading through virtually endless content, we’ve done the work for you. Now, we’re going to tell you how to quickly find your websites weaknesses using GA reports.
- Bouncing: Your site’s bounce rate is the number of single-page sessions, or the number of times someone visits your site and leaves quickly, with no interaction. There are a number of reasons sites develop high bounce rates. For example, if your site is a single-page (only one page), analytics won’t count multiple page-views unless the visitor reloads your site. GA shows what percentage of users bounce per page. If your site has a high percentage of visitors leaving, let’s say a 70 percent bounce rate for a single page, you know it’s time to re-examine that specific page to keep visitors there and interacting longer. One thing to consider is the flow of your page. A high bounce rate could indicate your site’s information is easily accessible and sufficient. If visitors find what they need quickly, they have less reason to stay on that page.
- Exiting: Your exit rate is the percentage of visitors leaving your site from a certain page. This seems very similar to the bounce rate, but they’re not the same thing. Exiting a page doesn’t mean the visitor didn’t interact on your site or visit other pages within it, it just means they exited the site after landing on a certain page. GA reports shows you the number of exits per page and your site’s overall exit rate. This information helps you identify pages with opportunities for improvement.
- Funnels: Funnels refer to the routes visitors use to navigate your site. GA has a report to show you the percentage of traffic leaving per funnel. For example, say your site starts with a home page, then leads to an information or application page and ultimately to a subscription page. A funnel breakdown shows you where traffic leaks are at which funnel points. You might have a high traffic leak on your home page, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the page doesn’t work. It might mean you’re not receiving a high number of interested visitors. If enough traffic isn’t flowing through to your subscription page, you might want to make changes there and determine how to bring in relevant/more interested visitors.
- Timing: Real-time GA reports shows you what’s happening on your site at the present time. These reports update on a consistent basis and give you data about interactions as they occur. You can see how many visitors are currently on your site and which page or pages they’re spending the most time on. This information gives you an idea of when the best times might be to add content or reply to visitor comments and questions. If you typically like to reach out to your visitors on Monday mornings, but you’re receiving the most traffic on Friday afternoons, this tells you it’s probably time to rethink your schedule.
