Using Web Analytics to Improve Web Content Quality and Usability

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Content is the king on the Internet and there is no second thought about it. The web technology has changed a lot in last 2 decades but core theme of Internet is still the same…to provide value information using web content. Social media is becoming the new source of information and web masters are shifting focus to user generated content. Search engines spiders love fresh and useful information and will continue to do so in future.

It is important to understand what your visitors like to see on your website. Quality content can improve visitor engagement and improve the site conversion.

Web analytics plays a key role in identifying the quality and usability of the content. If you have not installed web analytics software on your website then I would highly encourage you to do so. Read my earlier post “What is web analytics?” to learn how to instantly get started using free web analytics tools.

To measure the success of your web content you must first define the key performance indicators or key web metrics. Once you have identified the metrics you can use these to benchmark your web success.

The key metrics that I like to focus my attention to improve web content quality are page views, avg. page views per visit, time spent on page, and bounce rate.

Let’s dig deeper and understand each of these metrics and how they impact the visitor engagement.

1. Page views – This metric will help you identify the top pages on the site. Prepare a list of your top ten web pages. It is important to focus your attention on these pages because this is what your web visitors value the most. Sometimes, page views report can provide you extremely valuable information about your web content.

2. Avg. page views per visit – It’s a good idea to understand how many pages on average are being viewed on your site per visit. If your website avg. page views per visit is less than three then you might want to focus on the top three pages first.

3. Time spent on page – For each of your top pages find out the time spent by the visitors on each page. Visitors spend more time on a page either because of good quality of the content, or trying to figure out what to do next. If you see higher bounce and higher time spent then it is a clear indicator that the visitors are confused.

4. Bounce rate – One of the most important metric for any website. You must always segment the bounce rate for each channel. Bounce rate metric can be used to identify the problem pages on your site. A good bounce rate is anything between 15% and 40%. Bounce rate and time on page metrics are the key to evaluating web content success.

Initially, you will need some web analytics experience to evaluate your web content by looking at these metrics. Looking for shortcuts??? I love shortcuts and making things simple is my hobby and this is why I created a KPI that will quickly tell you if your site content is bad, good or viral (exceptionally good).

I call this KPI as the Content Quality Rater (CQR). Content quality rater will weigh your bounce rate against the time on page and will tell you how valuable your web content is.

Here is the formula I use to calculate the CQR KPI. Fill in the numbers and use the CQR rating scale to evaluate your site content.

screenhunter_03-apr-17-1750

Please provide your comments, feedback, or tweets here.

Here is a list of other helpful blog posts –

Bounce rate – Does it Really Matters?

What is Web Analytics?

Web Analytics for My Small Business

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

Time limit is exhausted. Please reload the CAPTCHA.

2 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments