Last year Google announced a nifty new feature to Google Analytics called Benchmarking. Benchmarking allows you to compare your website to similar-sized websites in the same industry vertical. Websites are grouped based on the number of visitors they receive and are classified as small, medium or large.

You can only view statistics for websites of a similar size to yours, for instance if you have a medium-sized website you can only view benchmarking data for medium-sized websites. In any given vertical there are a minimum of 100 websites participating and their information is used to aggregate the benchmarking data for that specific vertical. Below are some of the areas for which benchmarking data is available:

• The number of visitors over a certain time period to your website compared to the average number of visits to similar-sized websites during the same period
• Your website’s bounce rate compared to other websites of a similar size
• The number of page views your website received over a certain time period compared to the number of page views of similar sized websites over the same period
• The average time visitors spent on your website in relation to competitor websites
• The number of new visitors to your website compared to the number of new visitors to competing websites

In order to have access to the benchmarking feature you have to opt-in and share your data with Google. Google removes all information that can be used to identify your website and your data is combined with hundreds (or even thousands) of other anonymous websites in your vertical. This information is then made available to all participants and allows website owners to identify potential opportunities by allowing them to analyse trends in their and other industries. Very handy indeed!

The importance of having a well-designed and user-friendly website has been highlighted many times, yet once the website design and development processes are complete, that’s really only the beginning! Maintaining a website requires a constant investment of time and effort and in our opinion a website should always be regarded as “a work in progress”.

It is important to measure what happens on your website; for instance how visitors find it, where they enter the website and how they engage with your content and navigation. To measure these actions easily, web marketers make use of analytics programmes like Google Analytics.

One of the main benefits of web analytics is that it helps website owners gain a better understanding of what visitors want by analysing their actions on the website. Among other things, Analytics will show you:

• The source of your traffic; for instance direct traffic, traffic from search engines or referring websites
• The average amount of time visitors spent on the website
• Visitor loyalty (whether the majority of visits are new or returning)
• Your most popular content
• Geographic locations of your visitors with a map overlay that shows where in the world visitors are accessing your website
• You will also be able to see technical details such as which are the most commonly used Internet browsers, or the connection speed of your visitors

The above mentioned are just a few of the aspects of a website that can be measured. Analytics will highlight the areas on a website that can be improved (i.e. pages with a high exit rate) and areas that are performing well. As part of an optimisation strategy Analytics will point out which keywords are performing well. This information can be used to increase organic traffic to the website.

Since Analytics is focused on measuring user engagement, it is important to allocate goals to your website. Goals can include visitors filling in a contact form, downloading a brochure, signing up for a newsletter and so forth. The conversion rate indicated the percentage of visitors to a website that complete an assigned goal or task. As such, it’s an important benchmark used to show a site’s effectiveness.

Within Google Analytics there is a very useful and insightful benchmarking function (found under the Visitors tab) that allows website owners to compare their website to similar-sized websites in the same industry. Comparison criteria include visits, bounce rate, page views, average time on the website, number of pages visited and new visits.

Essentially, Analytics will help you improve your website on a continuous basis to provide your visitors with the best content and usability in order to increase conversions. Do you have questions about Analytics? Ask us, we offer one-on-one or team Analytics training on request.

Over the years we’ve worked with many design and development companies whilst performing various online marketing campaigns for clients. As part of our SEM campaigns we often need to boost the website with usability or SEM related (technical) tweaks, which result in adjusting the design and or technical foundation of the website.

With some projects we are fortunate to be involved as part of a new website being built from scratch and can weave our magic from the beginning, and with others (existing websites) it is part of a change process.

Usability (user experience) and conversion psychology are key factors in design and development, and they are both a huge personal passion of mine as well. For that reason all the campaigns we work on receive this feedback as part of the process.

Only a handful of designers and developers that we’ve worked with over the years implement our recommendations without hesitation.They understand that if the website performs exceedingly well everyone benefits.

Usually once a website is live the client holds liable the SEM for the ROI and not the designer or the developer, but the functionality of the website plays a huge role in this success.

From our side, we analyse websites not only from a design, usability, technical or SEM point of view, but also use conversion psychology. Traffic to a website is not the be all and end all. The proof lies in what the user does on your website. How easy they can find, or understand what they need to do and of course, if the psychology is added correctly how quickly they convert into a lead or a sale for you. This is where we focus our efforts – traffic and exposure yes, but conversion is the end goal.

The correct process is so important:

Grey screen functionality first, and then design the skin. Wave the usability and SEO wand over the design and ONLY then should you start with developing the website. QA testing once you have a click-through version available is crucial before go-live as this is where you physically test the functionality, usability and ensure that the content, design and technical structure of the site is sound. Then only go-live! And of course test again…

If designers and developers keep an open mind to the usability, conversion and SEO recommendations and implement those recommendations – they will win too. More SEM companies would recommend them and the client would recommend them too naturally. (Most of the praise for a well performing website will usually go back to the designer or developer.)

I’d be keen to hear back from designers and developers as to your thoughts and experience on the above. (Please not personal promotion, opinions please; any OTT personal promotion will be removed )

The good, the bad and the ugly – are you open to working with and implementing SEM and Usability recommendations, and if not – why not?