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:

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Why 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.

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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.

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