Thanks to Mark and the other fine folks here making me feel at home, I often think of you all when I am working.  As I am discussing things with my staff that seems of interest, I shall post them around the SR forums. We call them ‘rants’ around here since “Dave is always on a rant bout something”.
I mean well, I just hate logical feedback loops.

So, I was musing over the ‘referrers’ we’re getting on my main site CDS, from SR in relation to the blasphemous article that I wrote and was subsequently published on SR.

It’s a bit of a lesson in quality traffic over quantity. Granted we can’t definitively say that it won’t translate to revenues through osmosis, but the early evidence belies that thinking

Our traffic is up today (as of 1:44 pm EST) around 150% and the day is not yet done. Great news right? Not necessarily. While our over-all traffic is up, it would seem the ‘quality’ of the traffic as far as prospective revenues is concerned, is not.

How do we know this?

The average Page Views Per Visitor runs at an average of about 9 pages per unique visitor. This means they are looking through a variety of areas (we also have path tracking and more to tell us exactly where they are going) on the website. I also know whom is reading articles, and whom is looking at our service pages etc..
We can tell that our ‘average’ visitor is doing so.

Today, the average Average PView/Visitor is only 3.  The depth and paths being taken from these visitors is quite different from those we get on our standard business traffic.
We’re looking at a TON more data, but you get the idea.


Once again, there is always an inherent opportunity for revenues if not now, then in the future. It also must be is this NOT how we conduct our research. This is just an interesting little anecdote that we were chatting about over iced tea here this afternoon…

Cya

Well, a lot of the reason that you are seeing this is due to the type of traffic you are getting today, which is coming from Slashdot (the article was picked up by Slashdot ).  Here's the deal, though...the after effect of traffic like you are having today is where the real value is.

Am I happy that an article that was published in SR got picked up by Slashdot?  Absolutely.  How much extra $$ will I make immediately?  Probably not much.  But the long-term effects of this exposure are great for everyone involved.  I still see traffic from articles that were Dugg or Slashdotted months ago, and more importantly, I see traffic from articles that were picked up by subsequent sites. 

Its about building an image over time.  You may not see the $$$ today, but it certainly is not hurting you.

Exactly, that was the 'osmosis' bit I mentioned. Sorry about the 'Dave-speak'. Lol

I just wanted to illuminate some general 'observations' of some metrics and how we look at them. Main ideas is to translate the thoughts into your theories when analyzing traffic.

..and it's the tip of the iceberg as serious analysis here involves path tracking to see what they are "REALLY' doing.....

If you go by my site and bounce around, then send me your IP, I can tell you where you went and how long you stayed on each page and a bunch of other goodies.

Mark is of course 100% ON THE BUTTON. Think of the IBM or COCA COLA banner at a sporting event. It is rarely advertising a specific product. It is building brand. Brand building is very tough to get exact metrics on, but it is essential in any marketing campaign.

Here’s another tidbit. Historically, our home page (and many of our client’s sites) have an average retention rate of around 66%. This means around 33% Drop in, see if it’s what they’re after… and wander off.
The other 66% go further.

Today, with the influx of ‘love’ from the PR rant, our home page retention rate is, (7:30pm EST) is only 50%.  So we can start to see different user types and begin to get a better picture of their habits. By learning the habits of our various users (readers, potential clients, fellow SEOs) we can start to develop the site in ways that better define and serve the various user types.

This, once again, is merely to start illuminating some usages/ideas towards looking at Web Analytics. All of these ‘tidbits’ and many more are tied in to make your analysis.

… more as I run into things I think may be of interest.

I was thinking about this last night and one thing did come to me.  With a newsletter, the larger your list becomes, the lower the average open rate.  I wonder if it is the same for a website.  The more traffic you get....the lower retention and pageviews/user you receive.

Its pure conjecture, but a possibility, I think.

SiteReference wrote:

I was thinking about this last night and one thing did come to me.  With a newsletter, the larger your list becomes, the lower the average open rate.  I wonder if it is the same for a website.  The more traffic you get....the lower retention and pageviews/user you receive.

Its pure conjecture, but a possibility, I think.

We don’t do email or newsletter marketing, that’s an interesting metric. What’s the reasoning for the drop in the opening rate with more volume?

As far as a site goes, it’s pretty consistent. It’s a TINY metric I use often as a gauge of the over-all value of the content to the end user. In final analysis, the retention rate for the Home page for yesterday was down around 20% or a 45% retention rate. Down from it’s usual 66%. This means many visitors to the site are merely ‘curious’ or lost. Either way, if I did not know why, as I do, I would be looking into that metric this morning to establish what is happening.

For me, home page retention rates are due to the ‘is this what I was looking for?’ effect. It can help me in establishing if my marketing (SEO or otherwise) is acquiring ‘targeted traffic’. Around 6 months ago I noticed that the site had a HPRR (Home Page Retention Rate) of 50% or so. Historically, site’s that perform well have a HPRR of around 1/3 or 66%.

I worked on creating more ‘value’ (additional content, resources etc...) and updated the internal linking structure for higher visibility and promotion of various services and resources.  I looked at the site referrers (search results and other referrers) for potential sources of ‘bad advertising’ as well. Slowly but surely we ‘got it up’.

You can’t think of it purely as ‘they hate my home page’. It can also be a measure of your SEO/Advertising programs. You may have poorly targeted traffic reaching the site that say “This isn’t what I was looking for” not “Man this site sucks”. This is usually the case really.

Another area I use for indications of the site’s over-all usability and ‘stickiness’ is ‘Click Depth’. This is basically showing me the page depth (number of pages visited) percentages of visitors to the site.
Example;
N    Depth    Visitings     %

1                  1 page(s)       13    100
2                  2 page(s)    4    30.76
3                  3 page(s)    3    23.07
4                  4 page(s)    3    23.07
5                  5 page(s)    3    23.07
6                  8 page(s)    2    15.38
7                  7 page(s)    2    15.38
8                  6 page(s)    2    15.38

I always like to get averages above 20% at least. So at this pint my goals is getting the average Click Depth incursion of 6-7-8 pages deep up to 20% or more.

There are a ton of ‘little’ metrics like this that can add up to an over-all view of the site and ways it can be improved…

(only 2hrs sleep… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz damned Page Rank)