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Analyzing Visitor Behavior (part 1) PDF Print E-mail
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Written by Seo Master   
Tuesday, 25 September 2007

Visitor behavior analysis can tell you a lot if you need to figure out why your conversion rates are lower that you would expect from search engine and other referrer performance.

Under "Visitor behavior" we understand the description of the following points:

  • Where the visitors enter your site, how the visitors navigate through it and where they leave.
  • How much time visitors spend on your site and on separate pages.
  • The average number of visits they need to make before the first purchase; how much time passes between their first visit and first transaction.
  • How many visits to your site are motivated.
  • How frequently an average visitor will come back to your site.
  • Average number of visits per visitor, page views per visit and pages viewed per visitor.

These metrics help you better understand the correlation between the number of visitors and number of orders made. More importantly, it can point out how you can close the gaps in your technique to convert visitors into loyal customers.

A Web site is like a big store, however it has a lot more possibilities than an ordinary store, because here you can track every action of every single visitor. Smart marketers will use this information to offer visitors what they want the very moment they want it, enabling them to better merchandise their offering.

Additionally, certain reports of visitor behavior statistics (such as first transaction cycle time and visits before first transaction) may help you with forecasting sales, leads etc.

So, let's walk though the visitor behavior reports step by step.

Entry pages

This report can be found in HitLens under the "Navigation" category. It shows you where visitors mainly enter your site. The most popular entry pages are on the top. By using this report in conjunction with the "Pages found on keywords" report from the "Referrers" category, you can detect what users mostly look for when they enter your site through a particular page, and adjust the content of your entry pages accordingly.

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Entry Pages

Pages viewed after home

Similar to the previous one, this report is located under "Navigation". It shows you where visitors travel to after landing on your home page. These pages may be regarded as "secondary entry pages". Unlike the entry pages, this is the visitor's conscious choice, so by requesting a specific page on your site they assume they may find the content that interests them. The "secondary" entry pages are more important because they reflect some amount of visitor interest. Usually, each page viewed after home corresponds to a link from the home page. By analyzing the texts of the corresponding links, you may figure out what visitors primarliy seek on your site after the home page, and adjust the secondary entry pages accordingly.

Site stickiness / Page stickiness

These reports, found under the "Navigation" and "Pages" categories respectively, inform you on how long visitors "stick" to a particular page, or the site as a whole. In general, the higher this rate, the better; it means that your content is interesting and appealing to your visitors. However, if they spend too much time on the pages that require a more or less immediate reaction, e.g. order confirmation page, or product choice page with several brief descriptions, it may be an alert for you to make these pages more comprehensive.

Commonly, depending on the size of your site and content pages, you should try to decrease the number of visitors that spend 15 seconds or less on your site, and increase the number of visitors that spend 1 minute or more. You can accomplish this by enhancing the quality of your content and optimizing the clarity of your navigation.

Frequent visitors and Visit frequency

Under the "Visitors" report category, you will find the "Frequent visitors" report which breaks down all visits according to their frequency. Visitors that come to your site on a regular basis are likely to beomce loyal customers, and more likely to place orders. There's no recommended upper limit for this index, which means you may constantly try increasing this metric. One of the ways to do it is to announce and make regular updates to your site, or establish a newsletter which links to your site from within every edition.

The "Visit frequency" report is just the same however it breaks down the traffic by number of visits, not by time period.

Motivated visits

HitLens considers a visit motivated if more than one page of your site has been viewed, i.e. the visitor has shown a deeper interest in your content and offerings. You may find this report under the "Visitors" category. The higher this metric, the better it is for your site. The most efficient way to increase motivated visits lie in your content and providing the visitor with what they are looking for upon arriving at your site. Thus, if you focus on this metric, think first of how you can visually and textually improve navigation and whether you show visitors what they've come for at every single page (remember the "Pages found on keywords" report).

New visitors' second visits

Look for this report under the "Visitors" category. The higher this metric, the more appealing your site is to visitors during their initial discovery of your offering. You can also see how long it takes them to return.

Views per visit and views per first visit

Both these reports can be found under the "Pages" category. Look how many pages have been viewed during the average and first visit to the site. This will help you understand how sturdy and intuitive your link system is and whether you can properly motivate the visitors not to leave your site after they've just viewed one page. As a rule, this metric will be higher for repeated visits, as these are more motivated. Again, it's only your content and navigation that help you keep this index up.

 

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