My SEO & Web analytics Addiction Blog

Splash Screens, SEO & Analytics

2007-08-13T09:47:00.000+08:00

Dont know why but some businesses just love flash splash screen - maybe cause their owners inist of a fancy designs. An SEO client once argued insisting he should have splash screen at the homepage - why ? so that it would function like a magazine cover attracting his visitors .. A magazine cover?. A magazine cover has its primary job function to make people want to buy. And when they've bought, it doesnt need to provide easy of use. While in a websites case, your visitors are already on the websites homepage, and they have only a couple of minutes (less than 3 I reckon) before they decide either to click further or to bounce... so I told my client .. I wouldnt waste it on a splash screen.! 5 weeks later, the analytics data told us all tha his splash screen was a definet no no.. bounce rate was higher for the index page and the ranking dropped by 8 points..

E-commerce Time to Purchase

2007-06-28T06:47:00.000+08:00

I had a chance to analyze my clients Analytics Report. What the report told us is that several visitors visited the website 3 to 4 times before making a purchase.

You can see the bar go up on the 9-14 and 15-25th visit, meaning, there are even visitors who came more than 10 times to the website before making a purchase. (and their time to transaction recorded a purchase was made only after several visits.).

Some even made purchase 15 days after going into the website for the first time.

I think what this tells us is that my clients website was visited several times before the customers deciding to make the decission to purchase. I think you will agree here that this is a sign of indecisive-ness about spending money. I think what I can conclude from this report is that , very often, websites users dont make a decission about buying a product on the first day.(also depending on the nature of the product and industry the business is in) Its more likely theyll take several days to make the decision, but once its made, the purchase should be done quickly. But this is not always so, coz you see another client of mine in other industries, their e-commerce analytics data do not represent the same info as the above. The visitors of their website came and they purchase online at that instant, if not they will exit and find another site and dont bother comming back. Different industry, different site, different features offered by the site.

Bounces, Exits & the hard road to Conversions!

2007-06-21T08:32:00.000+08:00

After one and a half hour of SEO and Analytics online seminar yesterday on Bounces and Exits,

we did all agree that Bounces/Exits (Analyzed on Urchin, Omniture and Web trends) is the worse thing that could happen to a website traffic before the conversion stage.

Also, we've known most SEO's only to pay attention to traffic reach volume, less of their acquisitions and definitely much less of their conversions.

As I've mentioned before in my previous posts, allot of traffic from a huge volume traffic keyword/phrases producer may not be the correct solution that web owners should be looking for. It is imperative for online marketers/SEO consultants to understand that the nightmare relating to the traffic acquired is to retain them and making sure that there is less of bounces and exits and exists. You see, understanding the patterns of bounces and exits is valuable to a website success. You may ask, whats exits and bounces gotta do with SEO & SEM ?. there answer is, the bounce and exits value may be directly related to the reach method of that traffic group. The thing is, if a mismatch was to occur between the promise given by the reach technique (SEO or SEM) and the capabilities of the website or what the online business has to offer then you will receive alot of exits and bounces, - especially "bounces" )

( for instance, target ting at the keyword phrase "Musical instruments" - Google.com top 10 gives allot of SEO traffic - but is it quality traffic for a website selling drums ? maybe or maybe not ! will you expect to have a huge bounce or exit rate? will the owner of the website later complains and say, "why the hell I am not getting allot of sales after the huge traffic volume that burst right through my website ?" "Why am I getting a lot of bounces and exits ? "

This is just one reason why there are lot of bounces and exits, of course there are many other reasons, and bounces and exits from an SEO source on the front page is normally the biggest issue. Take a look at the image I've included in this posts, this is from an analytics report I made a couple of days back on one of my clients website businesses. The purpose was to understanding the behaviour of the visitors by looking at the click path they took. And you know what?, exits and bounces occur every time (always more than the 20% for the majority of the pages which matters most), its like there is a small hole in the bucket of water you carry which keeps dripping out water !

I'm sure you can figure out the rest of the cause of the bounces and exits and how to fix them !

Standards for Web Design & Development

2007-06-20T09:16:00.000+08:00

Ever asked your selves why for the love of web development and SEO, you should use standard design when developing websites? In the Online seminar this is what they tell you : Standard design ensures that your visitors

Know what features to expect
Know how these features will look in the interface
Know where to find these features on the site and on the page
Know how to operate each features to reach their goal
Dont need to wonder what things mean on websites
Don't miss an important feature because the feature originally isnt standard
Don't get really nasty surprises when something don't work as expected

If you think about it, the points to produce a positive experience is indeed important.

Three Click Rule of Web Development

2007-06-18T19:14:00.000+08:00

Did you ever hear anything about the 3 click rule rumour which goes around on the net relating to how you should design and develop your website. I was in an Online SEO & Analytics seminar today and this was one of the topics being discussed. The three click rule states that any information on the website should reachable from the homnepage in three clicks or less.

This is what the moderator concluded after the seminar. The three click rule seems like it was a good way to respect your web visitors time. You value their time on your website and you design the website to make sure they are comfortable on the site and most importantly can find what they want in a short amount of time. It seems to be a good idea, which is porbably why it has achieved the status of this rule. But what we have to remember here is that what makes your visitors give up us actually the total amount of trouble your website put them through to find the info they seek. People don't mind clicking through multiple pages as long as each click brings them closer to their desired objective. I can agree with that, because if you have huge big sites containing 10,000 product pages such as Novica.com and Craftnetworkstore.com attempts to force them to fit with the three click rule usually results in an overloaded navigation system.

Analytics Defined Funnel Navigation

2007-06-18T08:52:00.000+08:00

30 minutes ago after viewing my SEO clients analytics report, I found the Defined Funnel Navigation to also be a very useful reporting. Simply because it relates to your defined goal process. The image above shows the set of pages that I have defined as goal that users will sign up and then actually purchase via the e-commerce flow and get to the thanks page at the end. The graphical report shows how visitors navigate through the pages that youve defined and where in that process your visitors dropped off. I was surprise to find out that there were alot of bounces on the sign in page, which means something must be really UP about that page.

Very cool report to have ! Good for web developers/designers, online marketing managers, and even webmaster to see if what they've designed actually works. At the very end, it is also the usability of the site which has a say in the total success of this funnel. Sorry I cant be too clear on the image, this is my clients data we're talking about and I do not have any intention to disclosing valuable information.

SEO Keywords and Conversion relationship

2007-06-17T21:43:00.000+08:00

After seeing the analytics report again, all i can say is that if you're doing traffic acquisition for your clients website, and you happen to use SEO, sometimes the keywords that are producing the most traffic are not generally the best keywords that gives the most ROI for your clients. Remember that your SEO work is just at the reach and traffic acquisition stage of the whole process.

What matters for your client is the conversion, be that generating sales, or leads. And between acquisition and conversion there is always the funnel. So it will not just be about giving your clients website alot of SEO keyword traffic, but only the quality ones that count !. ( Alot of traffic ?...The client will love you for it since you're doing them a favor, it will even show that youve managed to boost their traffic count but then at the end of the day they ask, so why arent I getting any sales out of it ???. If you we're only an SEO guy, then it will not be your problem to understand the analytics of your clients website. But if you really want to make your clients happy and satisfied, then you'd want to give them traffic that convert)

In conclusion, its really about giving the SEO quality traffic that convert. 1000 quality traffic from an X keyword which has a conversion rate of 60% and loyalty rate of 2 average is better than a 5,000 traffic from a Y keyword which has a conversion of 5% and a loyalty average of 1.

So how can you differentiate?... Analytics man !

Omniture has a pretty good feature to compare keyword traffic and line it up with goal conversions, so does Webtrend and Google Urchin Analytics. This way you can identify important metrics value for the keywords acqusitions and how it relates to goals, funnels and conversions.

Remember that conversions will also depend on alot of factors including the experience your visitor have on your website. The above will hold true for the same website selling the same items with the same price but having different SEO keyword target reach.

Advanced Search Features & Analytics

2007-06-17T14:36:00.000+08:00

After analyzing my SEO & Usability clients website using Analytics, this is what I could say about advanced search (remember its advance(d) search not advance search - without the "d"). Actually when I think about it, many e-commerce web designers and developers places the advanced search features as a link under the search box and many of them think its just cool to have it or the websites got prestige to have it. Let me tell you what several of the clients analytic reports tell me.

--> Avoid it !!! when ever possible. Very few, almost none, uses the Advanced search feature, and for those that uses it, they go and bounce, as indicated in the advance search page bounce and goal settings !. Cause the bottom line is, unless you could develop an advance search thats so powerful encompassing all the possible searches your visitors can make, it almost always causes problems and dissatisfaction. And unless your visitors are highly technical, they will not understand how to make use of the advanced search features. Most of the time, they are being neglected and for the ones that ever uses it, they are dissatisfied since it doesnt produce their advance search results as expected. !!

Absolute Unique Visitors - Google Urchin Analytics

2007-06-17T01:57:00.000+08:00

I also wanted to mention inregards to the Google Urchin Analytics, that I've noticed that there are infact 2 type of visitors to your website, Unique Visitors and Return Visitors. The good thing about this application is that the unique visitor is broken down into Unique visitors and Absolute visitors. The definition is quite the same, but whats differentiating them apart is the time frame. Absolute visitors are definetly a count for a visitor that came in your website for the firts time.As for Non Absolute visitor could of came last month but since the time frame of measurement was only to be this month, then its counted as a Non Absolute visitors

Entrance Bounce Rates

2007-06-17T01:35:00.000+08:00

More and more I pay attention to one of my SEO clients Analytics reports from the output of Google Urchin Analytics, I found the Entrance Bounce Rate report to be very useful indeed. If youre accessing your analytics application, take a good look at the entrance bounce rates view in the marketing dashboard. Now if you connect this to what I said in my previous post on the 30 seconds rule it makes alot of sense, and the 30 seconds rule is actually very true indeed. You only have 30 seconds to make an impression, otherwise the visitors that entered your page will definetly bounce.

Let me define what a bounce is. Bounces are defined as the number of times visitors leave your site immediately from the same page where they have entered. So for instance if your visitors entered to the front page, when they bounce, it means they leave right off, for some reason you can only tell by looking at your front page. So the bounce rate, is then, the number of bounces divided by the number of entrances your visitors make. This report shows you how often your visitors fall off your site as soon as they land. We could conclude, its either they found the things they were looking for on your website or worse, they couldn't be stuffed to go deeper cause they thought your website was too lame (too busy, too flashy-alot of flash and not content etc). If you put the usability knowledge you have and connect it to the stats of the bounce rate and then really pay attention to your landing page, I am sure you'd know why the bounce rates are what they are and how to reduce them, or increase them to make your website perform better.

Remember, SEO is a only one traffic acquisition method, conversion and loyalty is the main issue here for the ROI of your website.

30 Seconds First Impression

2007-06-16T20:10:00.001+08:00

Just want to do the reminding here that when visitors enter your website
you have only 30 seconds to make an impression. If you don't make a good one,
you'll find out that you will have a huge bounce and exit rates indicated by your
Google. Urchin Analytics results. Good Luck when trying ! GodSpeed

Bastards ? - Most Hated Advertising Techniques

2007-06-08T00:25:00.000+08:00

From an SEO and Online marketing online seminar today about "How various aspects of online ads effected their wev experience" I thought you should be interested to know the results.

Design Elements
-----------------
Pop ups advertisements 95%
Loads slowly 94%
Tries to trick you into clicking it 94%
Does not have a close button 93%
Covers what youre trying to see 93%
Doesnt say what it is for 92%
Moves contents around 92%
Occupies most of the page 90%
Blinks on and off 87%
Floats accross the screen 79%

They hated the pop ups so much, its funny how a post on a website about pop ups had somethinking like the below message

"You people should be ashamed of yourself!, I did not ask to have three pop-ups come accross my screen when I visited you. I do not visit 'single' sites, and I don't want to add four inches to my penis. As a matter of fact, I dont use the services on my popup screen. I think its disgusting that you money- hungry bastards have infrigned on my computer for your own selfish gain. "

Ajax for positive user experience & SEO

2007-06-01T22:14:00.000+08:00

Great new software enhancement to improve positive user experience - in addition to flash interactive. Have you ever heard of Ajax ?, a friend of mine Dewi kept on mentioning about all the way through our SEO & web presentations at a clients site all the time, and I was in an online seminar today and found out what Ajax was really all about. Here we go, -

So let me go over it again - AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a group of technologies that allows you to make web pages more interactive. many website owners think their sites should be using AJAX. As with any technology, AJAX should of course only be used where appropriate. As ive said before Good (and selective) use of AJAX can greatly enhance usability , I think its good for SEO also if use correctly; the reverse can also be said to be true, so read on to find out when you should and shouldn't be using this technology... (Yahoo.com, MSN.com is using this technology, cool ! eh?)

Auto suggestions - you see, as soon as users start entering text into a text field, you can use AJAX to suggest possible completed phrases below the text field. If users select an item from the suggestion list this gets automatically entered into the text field. Users then don't have to enter as much text. Although this is useful functionality it should never be used as a replacement to regular dropdown boxes. The latter are far more effective as these fully eliminate the possibility of mistake or misspelling. Users often don't even notice the auto-suggest anyway as they tend to look at the keyboard (and not the screen) when typing.
Drag & drop slidersDrag & drop sliders allow users to narrow down the number of products displayed in a product listing. Changes to the product listing take place on the page, without a new page having to load up. These sliders can be very effectively but should only be used when there are a very large number of products with wide parameters.

Form validationThrough the use of AJAX form fields can be validated on the fly as users type, with an error message appearing next to each erroneous item. This means users can instantly see there's been a mistake and can make the necessary changes without having to submit the form (this is particularly useful for if a username has already been taken). That said, many users don't notice these error messages as they're too focused on their task so this has to backed up with regular error messages provided after the form is submitted.

A few days of SEO screw up

2007-05-30T20:50:00.000+08:00

Sometimes SEO screw up for a couple of days , positions go down coz of the cached at the wrong time and the wrong place. A client moves his website to another server, the migration was technical, there were glitches everywhere, stupid content management.. something happened long the way which made the transfer didnt go smoothly..then before you know when you check for a diagnosis you see 156 links in error and cannot be reached by the Googlebot crawl and the adbot crawl... ..what the hell....! what SEO ?

An Clown..in your SEO project !

2007-05-30T20:28:00.000+08:00

Yes yes yes so all my SEO mentors tell me !.. when you do an SEO project, and the client only knows your name and depends on it.. then you gotta choose the right team member who knows what theyre talking about and don't make the stupidest mistakes. They gotta be smart, somebody who you can rely on. If you see something weird about the guy, like his phone is always off or he doesnt understand business ethics, just kick him/her off your team the minute you see this happening.

Sadly in this society that we live in, friends vouch for other friends regardless of their true qualities, reason coz of the history from the beginning how it all came to be forming the team, and all that crap...it always gets in your way.

A couple of years back a client once told me, "hey man why did you choose him to be in your team, in this project ? , everybody says that he is just a clown ". Another client told me this, "How dare you delegate the task to a no SEO guy who dont have experience on SEO". And you were thinking in your mind, people learn ...what kind of people?..the ones that understands that they need to learn. The ones that don't just leaves everything be...says who cares !...at the end im not the one whos going to get his head chopped off... If your friend is thinking like this ?..better kick him out of your team...and forget he ever existed in business... there are idiots running around the place, you never know until you really think about it...

One more thing, better not be in the same team with your best buddies if you know they cant be relied on... coz sooner or later, youre the one who will both loose the same friend, a client or worse a big sale. Ive experienced this, so believe me i know what I am talking about !

What makes b2c buyers dissatisfied?

2007-05-29T21:45:00.000+08:00

Aliitle bit out of the SEO ordinary...just for your info, something I gathered today from a friend online ; did you know that out of many different reasons, ranging from administration, returns. support, the main complaints causing buyers to be dissatisfied when/after buying online (b2c e-commerce) centered on customer service ?. when broken down - result in 56% complaints cause businesses dont respond within 48 hours, 36% due to poor phone assistance or no phone assistance at all (can you believe that?), 26% no response to email, 25% in order processing or order cycle flow, 14% due to the order being late, and 6% on order never arrived.

SEO and WEBSITE on A DIET Programme !

2007-05-29T18:39:00.000+08:00

the way I see it, if a clients website is being handled by an SEO consultant, directly that website has gone into a Diet programme. Which means, unlike before, when the website can take alot of fatty text and link high in cholesterol, with the SEO consultants, the diet program the SEO consultant is doing on the website should work to bring it up to the top 10. But as I have stated on my previous posts, alot of tempting bad things can happen along the way, like the owner is tempted to do things that, even if the client knows, could be bad for their website in terms of SEO and ranking !....

Sometimes, I keep on smiling knowing that for a few of my (Bali and overseas) SEO clients website that has reached ranking top 10, their website has gone through a diet program that could not be comprimised. Proven to work !... and for those clients that dont choose to go on a strict diet programme eating chocolate along the way, ...or just doing semi diet, their websites ranking shows this aswell....

I hate handling clients whos website is only on a semi diet..or those who complains that SEO is causing their website not to be the way the want it..

For those other SEO clients reading this posts, I think you know what I mean !

The Client, The SEO consultant and the website

2007-05-29T18:18:00.000+08:00

As an an online marketing and Search engine optimization consultant (SEO) sometimes you are faced with issues like the one i will tell you about on this post.

The client wants their ranking to be top 10, and as you know, as an SEO consultant you are the one thats stuck with the responsibility to make it happen. But apart from them wanting to get a high ranking, they also want their websites to look nice and neat in accordance to what they like and what they think is neccessary for their business. But many times, these things are in conflict with each other. The issue of SEO, neat and nice and linking to friends site (like what the client wants), and the issue of positive user experience guidelines do not go in accordance to each other. Moreover whats worse about all of this is that a client updates his webmaster to do something and doesnt cc or inform his SEO consultant, which happens to be me in one case this week. So before you know it what doesnt get cc-ed , dont get noticed and a month later if not a few weeks, the client sites goes down in ranking drastically. The client points his finger at the SEO consultant not knowing that the cause of such drastic drop that happened to be due to a stupid update their webmaster did, which gets noticed a few weeks later. So what do you do when you're face with these kind of situations? well theres all sorts of different solutions depending on what characteristic of SEO consultant you are and if you know what youre talking about and youre sure from experience and analyzing the search engine that what you say holds ground. But one things for sure, the client needs to understand, why doing silly small things, like linking to a bad neighbourhood website which happens to be a friends site, from the front page is not a good idea, and who gets to advise the client in these kind of situations?.....
Nevertheless its not that easy, sometimes the client knows that its bad, gets advised that its bad, but still they insist on doing it simply cause they think its a good idea....

2007-05-16T19:46:00.000+08:00

My Guru once said --> "Flash should not be used to jazz up a page. If your content is boring, rewrite text to make it more compelling and hire a professional photographer to shoot better photos. Don't make your pages move. It doesn't increase users' attention, it drives them away; most people equate animated content with useless content. Using Flash for navigation is almost as bad. People prefer predictable navigation and static menus." <--

what do you think ?

Multiple Channels Squidinkjets and Generousfashions

2007-05-02T23:56:00.000+08:00

Hi folks, I was chating today with a person who happens to be an analyst at forresters research, ..I remembered this is what he said in chat, id like to post it here so Id remember later on when I decide to read back my blog. He said definetly "a customer who uses multiple channels to interact with the online business/shop, tends to spend more money with that business and even a chat live support function is always good to have and helps with the trust factor. They are more comfortable if they know a site has an online chat support available for them. " ...

He said analyst at FR, reported that customers prefer to interact with business accross multiple integrated channels, and will reward the businesses that offers this by increasing their spend on purchases. So, just by knowing this, we should integrate offline and online channels, encouranging our customers to use them all, and allowing them to move easily between channels.

An example of a client who uses the integrated channels is www.squidinkjets.com.au and www.generousfashions.com

SEO - Amazing PageRank Update Value !

2007-05-01T17:17:00.000+08:00

Recently I saw the Page Rank update ive been waiting for weeks and months
I was expecting something better for my clients SEO websites Page Rank
but apparently I didnt quite get the Page Rank value that ive been expecting
but be that as it may, the value wasnt too bad, there was light in the tunnel
and its still better than nothing..!

Looks like SEO (page rank) is now harder to get than before
ive seen some spectacular drop in rankings for some sites also...
makes you wonder how the industry will be in the next 2-3 years to come..
its amazing how Google.com is constantly fine tuning their Algo
you can really feel the wind blowing harder this time around !

Godspeed !

The Stikiness - Content SEO

2007-04-27T08:02:00.000+08:00

Did you know the elements contents of e-Commerce sites effecting SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

First factor is the stickiness factor which is the factor that effects the amount of interest a piece of fully "densitized" content piece generates in a user thus this would demonstrate the attractiveness and relevance of the content in SEO. Measuring the stikiness of the different content in your website and measuring the average reading time for that page should give you an idea how sticky your contents are ?..But beware, not all high sticky content is good. A high stickyness value for when somebody is in a registration form (for too long) will NOT be a good thing for your website now would it ?
As for Second, third and the rest, content effecting SEO i'll post again later ! got to go feed my dog now, ...

Elements of e-commerce

2007-04-24T00:08:00.000+08:00

Just so I could remind my self and who knows you may benefit out of reading, these are important to have on e-commerce sites

There should be a search function on every page located at the same place.
Wiew cart and checkout should be available on all pages.
On e-commerce sites b2c ofcourse I think price should shown next to each product.
Our web visitors are given help when choosing for products somehow.
When our visitors click on links it should change color, so theyd know where theyve been.
The search results and search terms are available and shown on top of the page or somwhere that it can be seen.
The visitors should be able to change the number of products being displayed.
The website should have sort and filter option at all times.
I think its also neccessary to show products category on the home page. There should be bread crums
The add to shopping cart must be seen
Ofcourse there should be a product description (this is also good for the search engines)
Similar and related products should be avilable
Ofcourse if possible the product pages should have an englarge photo capability
Procced to checkout should be seen
There should only be one time form to login in and log out

Sign in and Sign up e-Commerce sites

2007-04-22T21:51:00.000+08:00

Have you ever paid attention to sign in and sign up forms in e-commerce websites. I had several experience my self in projects, after completing the website, oh wow they always got the sign in and sign up mixed up. The thing is, when entering the checkout cycle, most sites normally have one form to sign in and another to sign up (or a link to sign up/register for non-registered users). The most silly thing is that when un registered users would often enter their e-mail (or username) and make up a password, thinking that it was the form to sign up. So to prevent this error, it would be advisable to combe the sign in and sign up/ registration into one form

Oh yes one more thing, make the sign up for simple, email account and password would be enough. Some have 3 fields, username, email and password. This is also ok, but more and more e-commerce websites are doing it the simpler way and using only 2 fields, email and passwords

e-Commerce Classic Plus

2007-04-22T17:44:00.000+08:00

Continuing on the classic e-commerce websites
Ive also notice the good website having these characteristics; do you ever notice that the number of search results and terms are always being shown clearly at the top?. There should also be an option to display the number of product results.? (from analytics I often see that seldom visitors click on the 2nd and 3rd and so on product link pages..just like in the search engine, theyre probably too lasy to go there). To shorten the whole process the view cart and checkout link should be available on the site - www.squidinkjets.com.au Squid Inkjets Australia, my client website has this whole element. Specially in an e-commerce b2c e-retail website, I also think that everytime the product is shown, the price of that product must also be shown next to it, coz you would expect customer to know the price before they add that particular product into the shopping cart