You’ve just launched a new website for your business. Now, all that’s left to do is sit back and wait for the leads to come in, right?

Not exactly.

To get the most out of your website, you need to pay attention to how people are using it. Seeing which blogs people are reading, what buttons people are clicking, and even what terms people are searching for will tell you a lot about how you can convert a new customer.

In this blog, we’ll dive into what website analytics you should keep your eye on, what insights they provide about your website, and how to make tweaks to improve your conversion rate.

Must-have Website Analytics

There are many different tools to view your website’s metrics. Although Google Analytics 4 is the most popular one, you can measure analytics with tools ranging from WordPress plugins like MonsterInsights or as part of CRM platforms like HubSpot. With these tools you get an inside look at how visitors interact with your website. While there are a ton of metrics to track, these are the most important ones for understanding how your website is performing.

Sessions

Sessions can be thought of as periods of time when someone browsed your website. From the moment someone lands on your website to the moment they navigate away counts as 1 session, as long as they remain active.

Website sessions are a good metric for understanding how busy your website is. It gives you an understanding of how many times your website is being browsed, not just how many people are visiting. This metric is helpful for understanding how your website is performing in a given time period. Check your website sessions monthly to see if any trends emerge.

Pageviews

Pageviews are the number of times that an individual page was viewed. Anytime someone opens up a page, they add another pageview to your total.

This metric is very helpful for understanding which pages of your website are popular. By seeing which pages are getting the most pageviews, you can understand what information people are looking for, which blog topics perform the best, and which pages might be difficult to find. Use these insights to lean into what works and improve navigation to pages with less views.

Most Visited Pages

The most-visited pages show you what content your audience is most interested in.

This metric can show you which services people are checking out, which of your blogs are creating the most traffic, and what pages people are looking at before they decide to contact you. A high-traffic page presents an opportunity: focus on how to impress your users and encourage action within your most-visited pages.

Session Duration

Session duration indicates how long someone is staying on your website after they arrive.

A shorter session duration could mean that people aren’t finding the content they’re looking for on your website. To improve your website’s session duration, add valuable information and don’t use “clickbait” in your ads or social media. In general, your session duration shows how long you’re keeping your visitor’s attention.

Location

Location shows you the geographic location of your website visitors.

For most businesses, traffic from outside the U.S. should be excluded from analytics results. For local or regional businesses, you may want to see what percentage of your traffic is within your service area. If you’re seeing a high percentage from outside your coverage area, you may need to adjust your marketing or more clearly state your location on your website.

Source

A source refers to where the website traffic came from. This includes if the traffic is direct, organic or paid. If you set up a way to track your campaigns (for example, using UTM codes), you can see which specific campaign brought traffic to your website. This means that you can know if the traffic source was from your social media post, a Google Search Ad, or your YouTube video ad.

This is one of our favorite metrics here at Liquid Creative. If you tie it to the conversion metric (explained in the next paragraph), you can measure which campaign brought your desired conversions and be able to evaluate the performance of each campaign.

Conversions Metrics

Some of the most common goals for business websites are leads and sales. When a visitor takes action on your website, it’s considered a conversion. Many service-oriented businesses rely on their website to generate leads, including form fills, email inquiries, and phone calls. E-commerce businesses are more likely to look for online sales.

Unlike the metrics explained before, conversions are metrics that you have to create yourself, based on your goals.

Here are three of the most common and useful conversions:

Form Fills

Form fills refer to submissions to any form on your website. These forms allow users to do things like ask general questions, requesting a quote or a free estimate, ask for a call back, and more.

Most businesses are interested in the quantity of leads they can generate through form fills. However, you should also be aware of the quality. Take note of how visitors are interacting with your form. What fields are they skipping? What common themes do you see? Making your form as fast and easy as possible is likely to increase the number of form fills you’ll receive. Optimize the experience by reducing required fields, adding dropdowns, and being clear about the information you’re requesting.

Phone Clicks

A phone click event activates whenever a user clicks on a phone number on your website. If you coded your website correctly, that click should generate a call. Although this works mostly on mobile, and only if the user clicks on the link (not if they call directly), it’s still an important conversion to evaluate.

Sales

If you are running an eCommerce website, tracking a sale conversion is probably the most important conversion metric of all.

How is your user interacting with your website

So, you designed your website following all the recommended web design trends. Now, which metrics can help you find out how the user interacts with your design? All the metrics we’ve talked about so far may give you valuable information about your user and the actions they take in your website, but they don’t show you how the users interact with each page. Are they liking the design? Are they interacting with it in the way you planned? Are they clicking in places you can’t track with other metrics?

To solve those questions you can use the following tools:

Heatmaps

Heatmaps show how users move and click around on your website.

A heatmap is a great way to evaluate user experience and interest. Pay attention to where people are clicking and where they aren’t. For least-clicked areas, make sure your language is clear and users know what to expect after they click. On the other hand, your most-clicked areas show you new opportunities for expanding your website content.

Session Recordings

Session recordings are actual video recordings of your user interacting with your website. You’ll get a screen video capture of important information like how they scroll, where they move their mouse, in what places they spend more time, and how they go back and forth in between pages.
For privacy reasons, you will not know who the person is or access important information they fill in forms, like phone numbers or credit cards.

Analyze, Strategize, and Optimize

Improving your website is a continuous process. Updating your website, adding content, and improving usability will both improve your SEO and convert more visitors into customers.

Using the metrics above to analyze your website, strategizing ways to improve it, and implementing those changes should be a cyclical process. At Liquid Creative, we develop stunning business websites while always strategizing our next step. We can improve your existing website with intentional updates, improve your SEO with monthly blogs, or even create a personality-filled site from scratch.

Our website team prioritizes strategy and usability to earn you the most calls and clicks. Learn more about how we can help you impress and convert your website visitors: Contact us today!

Website maintenance may not be the most exciting or glamorous aspect of web development, but it is critical to the health and performance of your site. Routinely updating your website ensures that it is continuously showcasing the best parts of your business and keeping you and your users safe.

1. Protect your site from malware and hackers

The web is always changing. If you aren’t keeping your site updated, you’re at risk of the website breaking or getting hacked. 

The main way that programmers infiltrate websites is through openings in outdated security software. As new patches are created, these hackers will specifically target websites that are missing these security features. This leaves visitors to your site susceptible to malware, and your site open to viruses that can cause it to go down completely. 

Additionally, without site protection, your SEO efforts will be unproductive. Your site’s Google search rankings will go down because of lapsed SSL certificates, and sites that have reported malware issues are delisted until they are fixed.

2. Provide a great customer experience

A website is often a potential customer’s first experience with a business or organization. Having a site with outdated content, a theme that doesn’t display properly, or broken links is not a good look.

Updating your software, plug-ins, and themes in WordPress will make sure that visitors have a positive experience when they navigate your site. Slow-loading sites are frustrating to everyone, and it’s a surefire way to send a visitor to another site. Maintaining your site ensures that it loads quickly, has functioning navigation tools, and that all the information your visitors are looking for is accessible.

In addition to the overall look and functionality, it’s also important to keep in mind the other ways people use your site. More and more people are utilizing accessibility tools to help them navigate websites. Keeping your site maintained and appropriately updated ensures that people using tools like screen readers are able to navigate your site and use all of its features.

3. Make sure that the website displays correctly

The internet changes and adapts based on the way people use it. Your website should be adapting to keep up with the changing needs of users. More people than ever are using mobile devices for their web browsing. Updates to your theme and plugins are key to mobile optimization. Staying on top of site maintenance is critical to ensuring that your site looks sharp no matter where it’s being viewed from.

Coding languages change over time, and this can cause disruption to your site when it’s not routinely updated. If your theme is using an older version of HTML, it will negatively impact how your site looks on the front end. Code often changes and becomes obsolete. Therefore, there’s no way to guarantee that a browser will read your code correctly, and your site may not appear as it was originally designed. 

Website maintenance that protects your clients, your business, and your brand.

We are now offering website maintenance! Our team will keep your website up-to-date so that it runs quickly, stays safe, and looks great. We work diligently to help you avoid costly repairs, excessive downtime, or the need to completely rebuild your site should it become infected.

Contact us today for a quote.

• Weekly backups of your entire website
• Continuous updates of WordPress plug-ins and themes
• Restoration services if your site goes down

1. Dramatic changes in PPC performance.

Covid-19 is causing our world to rapidly change. Unsurprisingly, ad performance is changing as a result. From March to May, cost per click (CPC) for Google ads has fallen dramatically while click-through rates (CTR) have risen. As things begin to open back up, the landscape is sure to shift again. The high conversion rates are likely a result of savvy marketers pivoting their messages to meet the needs of their target audience during the most restrictive lock-down phases. If you haven’t recently, it’s a good time to look at benchmarks in your industry and adjust your KPIs accordingly.

2. Chrome releases new metrics for evaluating web pages

Last month, the Chrome team released Core Web Vitals, which quantifies the user experience for your website. Going forward, metrics like loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability will be incorporated into search rankings. Page experience rankings will help users find relevant content that is easy to engage with. Top-quality content and on-page SEO are still going to factor in search rankings. These new metrics are there to help match users with the content they need in the best digital environment available.

3. Proactive marketers are gearing up for what comes next

Despite the economic uncertainty, we’re seeing an uptick in paid advertising. Things slowed down as businesses pulled their ad campaigns in the face of shutdowns and stay home orders. While unemployment is still high and the future is unclear, many marketers are starting to advertise again. Some businesses are newly advertising as they pivot from brick-and-mortar models. Other businesses are anticipating a surge in demand as we enter the new normal and are positioning themselves to be responsive. Online travel agencies were hard hit by the shutdown, but terms like “vacation” are on an uptrend as cabin-fever is setting in and states are lifting restrictions.

4. Move over live-tweets, Facebook Venue is coming soon

As Facebook moves to stay relevant as social media use changes, they have developed an app designed to make watching live events an interactive experience. While Venue users are watching a live broadcast event, they’ll be able to see commentary from hosts like journalists, athletes, or other experts related to the content. They will also be able to participate in polls and conversations that center around moments of the broadcast. These “Moments” will appear as notifications in the app and are created as the Venue host sees something discussion-worthy happening in the event. Facebook Venue will allow users to watch live events with expert commentary while connecting with other fans across the globe.

Be on top of the latest information in the digital marketing world. Each month, we’ll take a look at what’s changing in the industry and how it can help you move your strategy forward.

Improve Website SEO with these 4 Tips

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is always evolving, making it difficult for marketers and entrepreneurs to keep up. While staying on top of the search engine results pages requires a lot of research and know-how, there are a few tried and true methods to improve website SEO. Here we will review four of the classics that are still relevant today.

Use Your Social Media Accounts

Creating a strong social media presence will inherently improve your SEO, while you can also use your content to drive traffic to your site, increasing your site’s ranking by boosting its click-through rate. Social media also presents the opportunity for other pages to share your content, creating links that build your credibility. Expressing interest in community events and pages through social media will improve your local rankings by establishing your involvement, so engage online with businesses in your area as much as possible.

Update Your Google Places Page

As local searches become more prevalent, Google Places is now critical to a successful SEO strategy for the consumer goods and services industries. To be registered on the Google Places index you will need a physical address, and must provide in-person customer service.

When you create your Google Places page, make sure to fill out all the fields, not just those that are required. The complete information will enhance your credibility and improve your ranking. Keeping your hours updated, using relevant keywords, and uploading pictures and videos will all help optimize your page, along with adding a service area for those that operate SABs.

Create Internal and External Links

Google actually pays attention to how efficiently your website is laid out– though this is probably not purposeful. The Google “crawlers” that search your site for keywords will not access pages buried deep into your site. Minimize the clicks it takes to get to each of your pages to enable the crawlers to gather more data for search engine results. Linking to external pages will improve your site’s credibility in Google’s eyes, demonstrating that you utilized outside resources to inform your content.

Use Intuitive Design and Engaging Content

The more words and phrases your page has that relates to the user’s query and the longer a user spends on your site, the higher your ranking will be on the search engine result page for that query. Search engines algorithms pick up on a page’s keywords to calculate its ranking results, and then determine if the page was a good fit for the query largely based on how long users spend on the page.

An intuitive and aesthetically appealing design will help your users find the content that they are looking for, and remain on your site for longer. Generating engaging content will further increase dwell times, because the longer that a visitor spends reading your page, the longer their dwell time. Strong content is critical to implementing keywords naturally in your text, and to establish Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords. Though they sound complicated, LSI keywords are simply words or phrases that relate to your existing keywords, establishing strong context and improving your search engine rankings. You can use this free tool to find LSI keywords.

The Results

Use Google Analytics to gather data on your web traffic, and determine the effectiveness of your SEO efforts by the available metrics. Some key indicators to monitor include number of users, dwell time, and top pages viewed.

Website SEO for the Gainesville Area

The technical nature of SEO can make it difficult to implement, but these tips will send you in the right direction. If you need help with website SEO, give Liquid Creative a call at (352) 600-5050. We are always happy to answer any of your questions about SEO, graphic design, web development, digital marketing, and any other marketing topics you would like to discuss!

If you’ve been watching your organic website traffic dwindle, you’re not alone. Noticeable decreases in organic click through rates (CTR) are occurring across industries due to several contributing factors; from 2015 to 2017, organic search results on the first page saw a 25% average CTR decrease on desktops, and 55% on mobile devices. To analyze this issue, we’ll start from the beginning.

Understanding website traffic: What is organic click through rate?

Your website traffic from search engines is made up of two key components: paid and organic traffic. Paid traffic is made up of users who visit your website from an ad, while organic traffic comes from users who found your website without one. CTR measures the popularity of your website by taking the number of people who click on your page for a given search query and dividing by the number of people who viewed it. In formula form: # of clicks/# of impressions

Why is click through rate important?

CTR indicates how many people have clicked on your page, and strongly affects Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Though CTR is not the only factor, Google realizes that the pages people click on the most are probably the most applicable to the query, and ranks them higher in search engine result pages (SERPs).

Why are organic click through rates falling?

To take a comprehensive look at the problem, we will discuss three reasons organic CTR is falling, and what you can do to maintain your website traffic.

1. Increased Ad Volume & Space

Back in 2010, Google’s pay per click ads only contained a header and URL, and about five organic results appeared above the fold on a desktop. Today, pay per click ads include a header, meta tags, URL, and often ratings and links to top pages– causing them to take up more space. Due to the increased number of paid ads displayed and their larger size, fewer organic results appear above the fold. For product searches, it may be reduced to none due to paid ads and the Google Shopping carousel. This becomes even a larger issue on mobile devices– because of the smaller screen fewer results are displayed.

2. Labeling Changes On SERPs

Half of adults don’t recognize if what they’re clicking is an ad, and that number rises to 70% for teens. Back in 2000, all Google ads had a shaded yellow background, making it clear that they were promoted pages. Now, ads are only distinguished by the small green “Ad” logo to the left of the website’s url, as pictured in the above screenshot. Though users may prefer to select an organic result, many are unaware that they are clicking on a promotion.

3. Featured Snippets and Voice Searches

Featured snippets, sometimes referred to as “answer boxes,” have made it harder and harder to get customers to scroll down SERPs. So, what is a featured snippet?A featured snippet is essentially an answer to a query pulled from what Google deems to be the most relevant website, and is displayed at the top of the SERP. This same type of algorithm is also used for voice searches. Fortunately, this feature will mainly affect information-based pages; there will not be a featured snippet that recommends a specific product or service.

Three steps to increase your organic website traffic

• Research strong keywords: Determine what words and phrases are most relevant to your company by using tools such as Google AdWords’ Keyword Planner
• Develop a content strategy incorporating your keywords: Once you have established your keywords, begin generating content that utilizes them and demonstrates strong context; you can use your keywords to find the right LSI (context) keywords using this tool
• Share content on social media: Growing your social media presence will inherently improve your website’s SEO; if used correctly your social media channels will drive traffic to your site, creating leads and further enhancing SEO through increased users and engagement

Capture paid website traffic

Even if you perfectly optimized your website and did these three things tomorrow, it can take Google about a month to improve a small website’s position on SERPs. If you’re looking to increase your website traffic today, paid digital advertising is the best option. Though paid advertising will capture traffic quickly, it’s important to develop a long-term strategy for generating organic website traffic.

Need a hand?

If you’re not sure where to start, or feel like you’ve tried everything but still can’t increase your website traffic, we’re always happy to help! Give Liquid Creative a call today at (352) 600-5050, and take the first step towards having an awesome, optimized website!

Today, it’s generally accepted that when a customer is seeking information on a company their first inclination is to visit its website. Then why is it that in 2017, 35% of small business owners indicated they believed their business operations were too small to warrant a website? As they say, if you’re not growing you’re dying, and if your goal is growth then a website is one of the best tools to widen your brand’s reach.

If you’re considering building a website this year, or redesigning your current one, three of the most important things to keep in mind include usability, aesthetic appeal, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Usability

Your first step should be to consider the end user of your site. Who are you targeting, and what information is most relevant to them? From there, you can determine what content to include on your website, and how the information should be laid out.

Utilize the menu to group information so that users can find it intuitively, and home page buttons to direct them to pages on your site where you’d like to see increased traffic. Use a call to action when possible to encourage users to engage with links, such as “Sign up for our Newsletter” or “View Upcoming Events.”

Regardless of your industry, contact information such as your business phone number, hours of operation, address and email should be quickly accessible. An easy and inexpensive way to test the intuitivity of your site is to time friends or family members to see how long it takes them to find pertinent information.

And remember, users want to navigate your site as quickly as possible, so text should be used with purpose. Your mission statement should be short but powerful, as should your product or service descriptions.

Aesthetic Appeal

Design is critical to conveying your brand’s identity, enhancing the user experience, and creating emotional appeal. If you haven’t already, you should establish your brand standards before designing a website. This document will outline appropriate uses and variations of your logo, and the colors, fonts, and types of imagery that will most effectively convey your brand’s value. These standards will be used to inform the design of all your communications materials. In establishing specific parameters, you will enhance your brand’s value through consistency, and more easily draw inspiration for future marketing campaigns.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engines populate their results based on algorithms that determine which pages are most relevant to the user’s query. An SEO strategy aims to increase organic traffic based on knowledge of these algorithms. There are a lot of factors that contribute to a solid SEO strategy, three of the most critical include user engagement, content and keywords, and mobile optimization.

RankBrain was Google’s third most important ranking factor last year, and they indicate it will become an even larger asset in 2018. So, what is RankBrain?  It is essentially a machine learning system that collects data on how users engage with their search results, and ranks the websites accordingly. The top factors considered are dwell times, bounce back rates, and click-through rates.

Essentially, the more people that click on your site and spend some time there, the higher your ranking will be. To achieve a high click-through rate and reduce bouncebacks it’s important to reach the right audience, so you should develop your website’s content with SEO in mind.

It used to be enough to include just your keywords in your content and meta tags, but today Google also looks at the context to determine whether you are comprehensively covering a topic.

To show that your site has strong context, you should also add LSI keywords to your site. These are terms that relate to your topic or business, and there are plenty of online tools to determine which are most effective for your established keywords.

One of the best ways to improve SEO is by creating original content, such as longer blogs, that include strong keywords and context. A blog page is also a great way to showcase your industry expertise without becoming too wordy on other pages of the site.

If your website is not optimized for mobile, 2018 is officially the year to fix that problem. 60% of Google searches now originate from a mobile device, and as a result, Google will adopt a mobile-first index this year. This means that for SEO purposes, Google will first consider the mobile version of your site. Any content that is hidden on the mobile version will be completely ignored for search ranking purposes.

To prepare for the mobile-first index, make sure that all of your content is displaying correctly on mobile, and is still intuitive. Remember, bounce back rates are a critical factor in SEO, so you don’t want users leaving your mobile site because they can’t properly view its information.

The Takeaway?

The best practices in online marketing are always changing, so it’s important to continuously research what’s relevant in SEO, and the tools available to increase traffic to your site. A website opens your brand to the world; keep usability, aesthetic appeal, and SEO in mind to ensure that it’s well represented.