We held an event here in London last week called adChamps. I’ll do a write up over on the adCenter Blog for Advertisers at a later date, but the idea behind the conference was to give our advertisers a voice. We gave them an opportunity to meet developers from the adCenter team and give really detailed feedback on the user interface, tools and editorial processes.
It may be a very British trait, but sometimes it takes a bit of time to get an answer on what people really think about something. On the surface things may seem rosy or at least like there are no major problems, but ask the right questions, dig a little deeper and probe in the right areas and you can uncover a raft of issues that need addressing immediately.
On this blog, in recent months, we’ve been talking about the fact that too many companies report on just unique visitors and page views. What looks like success on the surface can quickly unravel within a few clicks..........f you know where to look!
Does a quick scan of the above report show things are looking ok for this site? They have lots of visits and page views, but as Charles pointed out on his post about Bounce Rate Analysis, the number of visitors leaving the site without clicking any further in is very high, so there may be a problem.
There may be a problem if the site is of a commercial nature. When people land on an e-commerce site, you want them to put the product in their basket and continue to purchase. They’ll generate multiple page views per visit and lower the bounce rate.
But what if the site is a blog?
When users visit a blog, they’re there to read the particular post that has been written. You’d expect a few to read a some other posts, but in general you wouldn’t expect multiple page-views to be generated.
So having a high bounce rate is generally acceptable with a blog compared with an e-commerce site.
However – How do you know if people are actually reading the blog posts? It’s no use reporting you’ve had loads of visits and page views, and it’s ok that your bounce rate is high because your site is a blog, if you don’t know if people are actually reading your wisdom.
Under the Visitor Loyalty report section in adCenter Analytics you’ll find a key report: The Length Of Visit
This will give you an excellent clue as to whether users are finding your content compelling.
The above stats indicate the content may not be as sticky as the blogger would like! Some more in depth analysis will be required – checking search referrals and suchlike to determine the cause of such low engagement.
Conversely, the above figures paint a pretty good picture that people are finding the blog posts interesting and worth reading.
As with a lot of things in life, it’s great to be positive! But maybe not when things are not quite what they seem.
That’s why we hold events like adChamps. We want to dig a little deeper and get a more wholesome perspective on how we’re doing in order to challenge ourselves to get better & better.....!