[OGStilts]

Some of you may remember that I started working on improving my website traffic back in December and I have really been seeing progress ever since. I would just like to see if I can get some feedback from some of your actual statistics to see if I am on the right track here.

My hypothesis is that different trades and different market areas are going to see more or less traffic than others but hopefully we can weed through this information and come up with some sort of bench mark that we can all be striving for. For example, I think there are more people on the net looking for plumbing contractors than deck contractors because let's face it everyone's toilet gets clogged at some point in time but not everyone builds a deck on their house and when they do it isn't all that often.

Anyway, on to the stats. I will start it off. Here are my stats for my main website according to google analytics for the past month and I'd say these stats have been holding pretty steady for the past couple of months.

Site Usage:
230 Visits
34.4% Bounce Rate (Will someone please explain what number we should be shooting for here. I still don't think I fully understand this one)
807 Pageviews (I'm not sure this is important)
2:15 Avg Time on Site
3.7 Pages/Visit
79.40% New Visits

Traffic Sources:
54% Search Engines
36% Referring Sites
10% Direct Traffic

I also want to add that according to my hosting site that I've been getting about 190 Visitors each month saving my site in their favorites which I am encouraged by but I don't see this stat in Analytics. I'm also not sure why it differs but my host site says I actually get about 400 unique visitors each month.

How do your stats compare?

Thanks for your input!

 

[George Z]

I think these numbers are prety low to draw any conclusions with yet.
You get about 8 visits a day, I bet some are you, some from here.
Don't get this the wrong way, or discouraged, it just takes time to build traffic.

Just that the sample is not large enough yet for examining.

When we got 30-40 it got useful.
Now we get about 120 a day and things are predictable.

 

[OGStilts]

Actually I get about 40-50 visits per day according to my hosts stats. These stats here are just unique visitors every month according to Analytics. So that means any visit I make to my own site is only getting counted once in each month for stats that I gave. I don't think that's throwing off my numbers too much there.

I'd also say that painters fall into a different category than custom builders. I would venture to say far more people are on the net everyday looking for a painter to paint a couple of rooms than build a house. That's why I say we need to compile a comparison across all the trades to figure out where we should be.

I'm not so interested in actual site visits as I am to the %'s that others are seeing. I'm pretty happy with my leads and my google positioning right now. I'm just trying to figure out if the bounce rate is good and if my average time on the site is good.

 

[WestCoastVinyl]

Actually with these numbers you can still track what you're doing. And, you broke it down to bounce rate and page views. Now I need to ask, or maybe I missed it. What exactly is your website trying to do? Are you getting people to contact you? If so do you have the percentage on that?

 

[Home Services]

OGStilts,

There is a way with Google analytics to omit your own IP addresses (home, work, etc.) so your numbers won't be skewed. My web designer did it for us so we are looking at "real" numbers.

I am not an analytics guru (although I look at mine almost everyday) but, I have been told that anything under a 50% bounce rate is good/acceptable.

I believe your 34.4% bounce rate is good, but I would not take that to the bank - I'm personally not absolutly sure myself...

 

[OGStilts]

What exactly is your website trying to do? Are you getting people to contact you? If so do you have the percentage on that?

Well, I'm trying to build upon my brand and also get leads from my website. Why what do you do with yours? I tried to sell porn of myself on there for years but it just wasn't selling for some reason.

Yes I get contacted from my website. Some phone calls, some emails and some using my contact form. I don't have any %'s on that but obviously it's not as many as I would like but then again ask Bill Gates if he'd like to make some more money. Is it ever possible to get "enough".

Let me try to ask this another way:

Hey guys, what stats do you think are important? What is your bounce rate? What is your avg time on site? What % of your monthly visits come from new visitors? How about your traffic sources, what's your breakdown look like on that?

Thanks.

 

[tinner666]

Not even sure what it means myself, but traffic is still climbing on this site. www.albertsroofing.com and calls keep coming in. Stilll much slower than past 2 years.

May 17, 2009 - Jun 16, 2009




Site Usage
1,899 Visits
4,666 Pageviews
2.46 Pages/Visit 67.40% Bounce Rate
00:01:52 Avg. Time on Site
89.99% % New Visits

 

[plumbingdr]

Definitely should omit your own IP address... :thumbsup:

OGStilts,

There is a way with Google analytics to omit your own IP addresses (home, work, etc.) so your numbers won't be skewed. My web designer did it for us so we are looking at "real" numbers.

I am not an analytics guru (although I look at mine almost everyday) but, I have been told that anything under a 50% bounce rate is good/acceptable.

I believe your 34.4% bounce rate is good, but I would not take that to the bank - I'm personally not absolutly sure myself...

 

[OGStilts]

After reviewing the profiles of WestCoastVinyl and the PlumbingDr shall I suggest that we actually limit the responses here to guys who actually have websites and have some sort of knowledge base when it comes to websites.

WestCoast - A twitter page does not count as a website

PlumbingDr - Do you even have a webpage? Your new here so I have no idea what qualifications you have in regards to web pages and since you don't have one in your profile I can't even tell if you have one.

Guys like George, Home Services, and Tinner I know all have webpages and work very hard on promoting them and I have to think serve them well so I appreciate their input on the subject! Thanks guys.

 

[SLSTech]

Per Google

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.

For some reason, I lost my analytics about a month ago & just got it back up 12 days ago
123 visits, 225 page views, 1.83 pages per visit, 64.23 bounce rate (ouch) - I know it is less than that as the Photobook & a few other pages are not analyzed, but still not great

74% referring sites, 10% search engines, 16% direct

I think the disparities between the local hosts stats & googles is 2 fold - users that don't allow scripts to run & the bots that troll for pages

 

[OGStilts]

I think the disparities between the local hosts stats & googles is 2 fold - users that don't allow scripts to run & the bots that troll for pages

Thanks, that has been driving me a little crazy. I figured on the bot part of it but never thought of the scripts part. It's a large diffence when you are talking about 400 unique visitors each month according to one source and 230 unique visitors from the other source.

Anybody know about this "favicon" thing. I'm getting 50+% of my visitors each month doing this and I just assumed that means they are bookmarking me in their favorites but the more and more I think about it, that % just seems way to high to be what it actually means.

 

[Home Services]

OGStilts,

Great looking site! Your home page really "pops" (black background, house with lights on a night - very visually pleasing). Easy to navigate also...

 

[electricohio]

This isn't my opinion but rather the results of some very extensive testing by many very large web sites ( I have a white paper on this subject someplace) You may just want to test this.
In my opinion I do like the look of your web page however studies have shown that having a black background has a negative effect on the site visitor. Black is a color that is subconsciously equated to sleep...scary..not happy feelings. The only way to find out is to test it..try changing the side panels to white if you want and see if there is an effect..again I like the black too but that's the findings.

I use my page a bit differently then most do...I know google is no where close with the results they desply in analytics. The host is closer to the real results and is compairable to Alexa as well. If you don't have Alexa's toolbar..I would suggest you download it..it's handy to take a peak at competitors pages to see how they are ranking...or if your thinking of doing business with someone or a company you can check to see if they are getting traffic to their page...

The favoricon I wish I knew...no idea

 

[SquirrelNmoose]

Favicon is a 16x16 pixel graphic in the .ico file format. Put it in the root directory of your website server and name it favicon.ico . Here's a link that can generate one for you.
http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/

As stated before the black background can be an issue. If you use Google Analytics you can do A/B testing. https://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/splash?hl=en
You can stick with a darker color, that fits the ste. Maybe dark brown with a texture or maybe a gradient.

I like the over all look of the website, but I would increase the 'whitespace' on the edges, between the content and edge. When the content get too close to the edges (over on some of your list bullets in Firefox -Screen Cap) it is less comfortable to read for users.

 

[OGStilts]

Favicon is a 16x16 pixel graphic in the .ico file format. Put it in the root directory of your website server and name it favicon.ico . Here's a link that can generate one for you.
http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/ [/quote]

That's cool, I know what the Favicon is...I had it added to my secondary websites, but the question is what does it mean when it says:

Hits on favicon....... 247/383 visitors 64.4%

Does this mean that 247 visitors bookmarked the site? That just seems high to me.

As far the critiques of my website go, I appreciate your opinions and advice and will take notes of what everyone has to say, really, I will. It's good information to have. But I wasn't trying to make this thread all about my website. I think there are enough threads on here about individuals websites that we don't need another one about me. (I do have someone revamping my site to make some of the improvements you guys have suggested and some others as well so I know what you guys are saying, it's just going to take some time to get all the changes finished)

My idea was that this thread would be a place where we could all compare our stats to see where we are at compared to others in our fields of work. It doesn't do us much good to compare our site stats with sites selling golf clubs or porn does it? Here we all have sites with similar products and similar goals and I thought this might be benefitial to everyone if we could compare some of our site stats and see what we may need to work on.

Maybe our bounce rates are high or our search engine visitors is low? How do we know what is high or low without something to compare it to?

So if more people would be interested in sharing some of your stats like Tinner and SLS have, that is what I had in mind when I started this thread and thought would be the most helpful for everyone.

Thanks :thumbsup:

 

[silvertree]

This is from today, and I have a Favicon.

• 666 Visits

• 2,091 Pageviews

• 3.14 Pages/Visit

• 45.50% Bounce Rate

• 00:04:17 Avg. Time on Site

• 49.10% % New Visits

 

[OGStilts]

Silvertree,

It looks to me like you are getting a really good average time on your site. It must be all those great articles you write. Good Job! :thumbup:

 

[Home Services]

• Here are my Google Analytics for the previous 30 days...
• 355 Visits

• 1,537 Pageviews

• 4.33 Pages/Visit

• 38.59% Bounce Rate

• 00:02:58 Avg. Time on Site

• 84.23% % New Visits

 

[OGStilts]

Thanks HS,

Those look very similar to my stats with about 50% more visits. Looks like I'm on the right road, just needs a little more work.

Anyone else want to share, looks like we are starting to get enough information here to creat a baseline to work from.

 

[SquirrelNmoose]

Maybe our bounce rates are high or our search engine visitors is low? How do we know what is high or low without something to compare it to?

Yes you are right on. An industry that still needs local contacts has to look at things with their particular goals in mind.

Here is Google definition of Bounce Rate:

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy

While this is good information it's a little bit of a circle for a site that needs local direct contact, not an online product. You need them to contact you, ideally by phone. This stat can only track if they visit more than one page, like a contact form, product description more than one forum post etc.

Then they explain if visitors are landing and leaving you need to make your landing page more relevant to the terms they found you by. Great, makes sense if you need them to click a buy button, or read all your blog entries.

But an ideal web visit for a contractor would go like this:
Web surfer types in kitchen remodel your city
Your website link to your kitchen remodel section is shown in the search results, and they click it
The visitor sees your kitchen page, is impressed, gives you a call because your number is right there.

Perfect scenario for a contractor, but this would still show as a bounce, since the visitor only visited one page. In this case you can assume your SEO and on page marketing are right on, and a high bounce rate is a good thing.

Here are the numbers for a site I manage. http://aspenremodelers.com/
* 391
Visits

* 358
Absolute Unique Visitors

* 1,068
Pageviews

* 2.73
Average Pageviews

* 00:01:58
Time on Site

* 43.73%
Bounce Rate

* 89.00%
New Visits