Archive for the ‘Web Analytics’ category

Focusing Web Design on Conversions

January 21st, 2009

Most of our clients come to us with a eye towards a redesign for aesthetic reasons, but we feel like it’s also an opportunity to foster an environment that supports them revisiting their business goals. In our Portland web design firm, we’re constantly pushing to take site conversions another step. We started with analytics and heat mapping, which are great tools, but lately are focusing more on web design itself.

One of the interesting parts of working in custom web design is creating specific calls to action that actually produce the desired results. We definitely haven’t nailed down the process yet, but we believe it is our obligation as a professional web design firm to give our clients the best possible return on their investment. We identify key site goals with our clients through our Discover and Define process, create unique calls to action to funnel visitors, while maintaining usability and putting the visitor experience first.

A recent example is our redesign of the Julie Lawrence Yoga Center site. By pairing images of the yoga classes to develop visitor interest, with large orange buttons that guide them through the site, we hope to maintain the design aesthetic our clients are looking for, provide the portals that the site visitors are looking for and turning that visitor desire into action.

The Web Analytics Report That Will Make You Money

October 31st, 2007

Today we’re going to look at a report that is guaranteed to show you something that you can change to improve your website’s performance. Why is this so hard? Well, the trick with web analytics is to find the report that tells you what to do: the internet throws off more data than any other medium in history, and as a result we are drowning in non-useful, non-actionable data.

Here are some typical web reports from typical web analytics tools:

Bad Web Analytics Report

» Read more: The Web Analytics Report That Will Make You Money

Conversion Rates: An Unhealthy Obsession Worth Having

October 24th, 2007

Conversion RatesWhy does your website exist? Think about it for a moment, and you’ll realize that it’s not an easy question to answer. If you can’t give a concise, fifteen-word answer to this question, you know you have a problem. Once you know why your website exists, you can start to figure out what actions you want your website visitors to take. After all, if your site exists to generate leads for your service company, and none of your thousands of monthly visitors ever pick up the phone or send you an email, is the website a good investment of your time and money?

There are two big problems with conversion rates, however.

» Read more: Conversion Rates: An Unhealthy Obsession Worth Having

Bounce Rates: A Website's Best Friend

October 17th, 2007
Website bounce page
Do you have a page like this?

A while back we wrote an email newsletter that talked about bounce rates. Due to the clamoring for more information, I have decided to expand this into a post.

First, what is a bounce rate? Depending on your analytics tool, bounce rates are defined slightly differently:

  1. Any visitor who stays on your site for less than a certain amount of time (usually 10 seconds).
  2. Any visitor who only looks at only one page on your site before leaving

While the definitions are slightly different, the end meaning is exactly the same: you got absolutely nothing out of those visitors. Zilch. They don’t even remember your company name or what your logo looked like.

» Read more: Bounce Rates: A Website's Best Friend