Week 5 assignment: Valuable reports and measurements

I generated traffic to one blog post, “Content is definitely king” on Saturday, February 16 to 226 people that have me in their circles on Google+. The measurements of interest included: number of page views, content by title, bounce rate, traffic sources, referrers, traffic sources, and mobile devices. I chose these measurements to draw conclusions on ways to improve my blog’s content in relation to current and potential audiences. I am primarily interested in providing interesting posts that will keep viewers clicking-through to other posts (measured by page views, content by title, bounce rate) and understanding/catering to who my audience is (measured by traffic sources, referrers, and mobile device use). Mobile device use may not be of the utmost importance for the Blogger website, as it is optimized for mobile devices, but would be relevant if I needed to measure an e-commerce website’s engagement and conversion rates. For sites receiving higher volumes of traffic, keyword targeting and average session time would also be important metrics to measure the true results of one’s online marketing efforts (Hines, 2011).

Page views
I am interested in page views to measure my blog’s growth through Google+ promotion. Long-term measurement over weeks and months would return more accurate results but I received a whopping three additional page views through promotional efforts on Saturday. Kaushik (2010) says, “page views are dead” (p. 126); however, in this instance, I can directly measure the impact of promoting this blog in terms of effectiveness of reach. Promoting my blog on other social media channels would (hopefully) result in an increase in page views and provide the opportunity to measure trends regarding which channel is most effective for promotion. Gunelius (2013) also notes that measuring page views is an important statistic to provide potential advertisers, to watch for spikes in traffic, and to find the best time to post new content.

Content by title
Content by title is an interesting metric as it identifies the types of content that adds the most value to an ultimate outcome (Kaushik, 2010). In the content drilldown report, I can measure how one blog post is performing in comparison to others and create more content based on, and similar to, the most popular posts. While my blog is titled “IMC 642: Web metrics and SEO” the post I promoted was related to the importance of valuable content. Tailored posts relating directly to Web metrics and SEO could ensure audiences are finding the information they are seeking. For an e-commerce site, this metric would be useful in creating and promoting products similar to top-sellers, resulting in an increased ROI for a company.

Bounce rate
Kaushik (2010) advises that a high bounce rate can mean the wrong people are coming to your site (highlighting problems with campaigns, SEO, etc.); or the page itself is poorly constructed (missing calls to action, etc.); or otherwise broken. A high bounce rate could also mean the content is not targeted enough to a certain audience, which also relates to the content by title metric. Preparing more keyword-targeted and relevant content would decrease bounce rate and improve overall time on site and page views. Prior to Saturday’s Google+ post, my bounce rate was between 88 per cent and 100 per cent. This decreased to a 66 per cent bounce rate, which is not anything to write home about, but suggests that reaching a larger audience can result in acquiring viewers with interest in this blog’s content.

Traffic sources
The screenshot below shows the number of visits by blog has received since the first post. Of viewers visiting this blog, 26 visits were direct, two were Google/organic searches, one was referred from Google+, and one was referred from a classmate’s blog. The direct visitors statistic can be further segmented by the percentage of new visits, which is at almost 8 per cent. As 92 per cent of direct URL visitors consisted of my own visits to my blog, this information can be misleading as Google treats the traffic as direct when a referrer is not passed (Sharma, 2013). Furthermore, this could lead to crediting conversions and transactions to the wrong acquisition channel for a website or e-commerce site (Sharma, 2013).

Referrers
Analyzing referrers, or the amount of traffic from other sites, will provide information on not only where my traffic is coming from, but also what is most interesting and relevant to those visiting my blog. Kaushik (2010) states that receiving 20 to 30 per cent of traffic from referring sites is ideal. In excluding direct traffic, it is apparent that 50 per cent of my traffic comes from referring websites; therefore, I should focus on creating a balanced source of “quality traffic” (Chaffey, 2011) by focusing on search engines (for diverse organic traffic) and direct traffic (for visitor retention and loyalty).


Mobile devices
As previously mentioned, Blogger is optimized for mobile device use but I chose this metric due to the rapid increase of mobile users (myself included), which is projected to reach one billion by 2014 and due to mobile marketing being the next frontier of advertising (Abayomi, 2013). While my blog received 0 views from a mobile device, an e-commerce website, for example, would receive a great deal more. As a matter of fact, $1.2 billion worth of e-Commerce was conducted on mobile phones in 2009 (Abayomi, 2013). Companies should not overlook the importance of utilizing mobile analytics and should be certain their website performs well on mobile devices. Optimizing for mobile provides further behavior and event tracking opportunities as well as additional opportunities to drive user engagement through push notifications and cloud backup options (Abayomi, 2013).


By setting objectives and identifying targets, I have gained valuable insights from analyzing Google Analytics’’ metrics and measurements. While GA provides a plethora of reports to analyze online marketing efforts and effectives, the most important outcome for this blog, and arguably any other blog or website, is to measure the data that can be used to draw conclusions to help you continually improve (Lewis, 2012).

References 

Abayomi, T. (2013). How to Effectively Track 3 Types Of Mobile Metrics. KISSmetrics. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/mobile-metrics/

Chaffey, D. (2011, July 4). How balanced is your traffic mix. Smart Insights. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/customer-acquisition-strategy/how-balanced-is-your-traffic-mix/

Gunelius, S. (2013). 10 blog metrics bloggers should track through web analytics tools. About.com. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://weblogs.about.com/od/addonsandplugins/tp/10-Blog-Metrics-Bloggers-Should-Track-Through-Web-Analytics-Tools.htm

Hines, K. (2011, October 26). How to set up goals and track conversions in Google Analytics. Sprout Social. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://sproutsocial.com/insights/2011/10/how-to-google-analytics-goals/

Kaushik, A. (2010, November 15). Beginner's guide to web data analysis: Ten steps to love & success. Occam’s Razor. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/beginners-guide-web-data-analysis-ten-steps-tips-best-practices/

Kaushik, A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of customer centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing.

Lewis, A. (2012, December 21). Top 10 most important Google Analytics Reports – keyword rankings need not apply. Koozai. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://www.koozai.com/blog/analytics/top-10-most-important-google-analytics-reports-keyword-rankings-need-not-apply/

PI Reed School of Journalism. (2013). Lesson 5: Google Analytics. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from ecampus.wvu.edu

Sharma, H. (2013). You are doing Google Analytics all wrong. Here is why. SEO Takeaways. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://www.seotakeaways.com/google-analytics-wrong-why/#ixzz2LBSCv3Xs