Optimize your ad dollars: Know your web traffic

Recently we were asked to help a real estate firm with multiple domain names improve the performance of their traffic.   They were spending plenty on PPC (pay-per-click) ads, and people were clicking because Google continued to max-out their ad budget daily, but lead quantity was flat or even falling.

Step 1 is always asking this: "How do you analyze your traffic now?"

The three most common answers:

1.  Anaylze traffic?  What's that?
2.  We look at our web logs
3.  We use a service

It's amazing how many companies have large ad budgets but then never implement any kind of tracking program to keep an eye on what works.  Here's a good example.   The above company had purchased a domain, then connected it to a PPC campaign and watched how their visitor count jumped.   What they didn't know was they had a bounce rate of about 95% -- a term that describes what you do when you hit a page you don't want.  

If you are spending *any* money on web traffic, here are my top things that you should be doing to maximize the performance of your ad dollars:

1.  Review your traffic at least once a month.  If you start a campaign, it's critical to have a baseline of performance.

2.  Don't stare at meaningless numbers like total visits or top referrers.   Your mantra should be "We want leads, not just clicks"

3.  Know your bounce rate on all your entrance points (web logs generally can't tell you that)

4.  Know which links perform and which ones to move/change

5.  Know and track ATOS (average time on site)   How long someone stays matters!

6.  If you have multiple domains, make it easy to view trends all on one report.

Solutions

If you're using web log reports from things like Webalizer, that's better than nothing, but it's not a useful tool for optimizing your site(s).   Here's a snip from a Webalizer report that they were attempting to use to monitor ad campaign effectiveness...



While better than nothing, this would be just one rung above. (because tracking totals does nothing to tell you what visitors are doing on your site)    Also, look at Sites vs Visits on the 30th.   2658 visits coming from 1722 sites?   Not even sure how you would do that!

Google Analytics is hard to argue.  Their interface is simple, the technology for getting data involves inserting some simple code into your web pages.  What they also do beyond a Webalizer approach is tell you how your links are performing.  

To the left is a sample I ran from one of my sites yesterday as an example.   Based on this one day of traffic, "About You" and "What Do You Get" should be moved, or removed entirely.  The idea behind analysis is to "check and adjust" based on trends. 

The only downside of free services like Google:  You're on your own.  If something doesn't work or if you don't understand, there is no Google help desk that's going to answer the phone.   However, if you have a basic understanding of this topic, you'll likely have no problem getting the hang of it.

(the tiny bar charts under each link show relative click rates...  e.g.,  Screenshots is twice as popular as Features) 

If you haven't tried Google Analytics, try em!   

  
Paid Services

If you run lots of sites, spend lots on ad campaigns and care about performance, a product like clicktracks.com is good idea.   It can automate much of the reporting and help you understand visitor behavior to truly measure that which is necessary to convert clicks into leads.   I read their whitepaper on Seven Web Analytics Sins, and How to Avoid Them and their opening quote was my favorite part:

"People commonly use statistics like a drunk uses a lamp post; for support rather than illumination.”
- Mark Twain