Website and Social Media Analytics

We remember the day when the hardest part about having a discussion with a client about website traffic was trying to explain the difference between a visitor and a "hit". Everyone back in the day loved to say how many million "hits" their site received, never quite realizing that a hit and a visitor were two totally different things.

Website analytics have grown up a lot since those early days, and with Google taking the lead in offering free, in-depth website analysis tools, we're now able to see not only how many visitors our site receives per day, but where they've come from and where they are going on our sites.

With content marketing taking such a strong lead in terms of where marketing dollars are being spent, being able to analyze and compare the site traffic of a banner ad campaign versus an e-mail campaign versus a social media campaign is imperative as companies continue to fine tune and hone their online marketing strategies. At the end of the day, the combination of viewing how many site visitors come from which website links, how long they stay and how many web pages, on average, they view, is fast becoming the #1 indicator as to what makes for a successful online marketing campaign.

1. The Bounce Rate

On average, a 50% bounce rate is typical for most sites. As quoted in Wikipedia "As a rule of thumb, a 50 percent bounce rate is average. If you surpass 60 percent, you should be concerned. If you're in excess of 80 percent, you've got a major problem."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_rate

Thus, a bounce rate as shown below from Google Analytics, is an example of a very good content marketing campaign, keeping the bounce rate well under 20% for the main referring articles.

This is typical for content marketing in general. The site traffic referred by one individual article is typically less in one month than what is sent to a site via a banner ad or e-mail campaign, but in the long-term, that single article will drive more traffic during its shelf life online (which can last for years), and the quality of that traffic will typically be much higher, with site visitors remaining on your website for a longer period of time and reviewing more pages per visit than the average site visitor.

2. Social Media Analytics

When it comes to analyzing the effects of social media in the marketing mix, Google Analytics is providing some nice, initial solutions, as described below.

With online analytics software available today, Google Analytics and Social Media Analytics have been taken to an entirely new level. These software packages incorporate and analyze a company's Google Analytics for their website, as well as their Facebook Insights and their Twitter, Instagram, Klout, Google Plus and other social media profiles, bringing it all together in a series of in-depth reports that truly "turn the lights on" in terms of understanding what is working and what needs improvement in a company's online marketing campaign.

By drilling down into the various sources of website traffic measured today, we are able to break a website's traffic patterns down into easy to understand summaries and charts showing how many visitors a website receives, where they are coming from and what are they doing once they get there.

Viewing it another way, site traffic "bubbles" allow a company to quickly and easily visualize the impact of the various sources of site traffic on their website.

All of the traditional website analysis tools available today, including Key Word analysis (what search terms were used to find your website), Landing Page analysis to better understand the impact of that first impression you are making to your website visitors, and Paid Search analysis to incorporate and measure the impact of your paid search and social media outreach, are all incorporated in these reports.

Analyzing the various social media channels a company is promoted on, and how each of those channels drives traffic to your website, is available as well.

The power to understand how an individual's social media reach impacts your social media website traffic, including knowing not only WHO your top influencers are interacting with your content, but also WHAT your top Tweets were that these influencers interacted with, provides a much more comprehensive snapshot to better understand what your marketing strategy's top performing elements are.

Our company, Pink Media, is now offering these social media and website analytics to select clients, with packages starting as low as $500 per month, depending on the size and volume of your website and social media traffic. We also offer a ONE-TIME analysis and review of your current analytics, showing you what works, what can be improved, and what your competitors are doing online and via social media. If this is of interest for you to pursue, please Contact Us and tell us more about your company, your marketing strategy, and what areas of analysis you'd like to see us focus on the most.