Giving potential customers the content they want on your site is an excellent idea - but how can you tell what that is?
Testing, testing and more testing – combined with web analytics. Using a combination of tools like site overlay and internal link tracking, you can the type of content your visitors want, and what keeps them around.
Then, you can offer more of it, on the site, in your newsletters, and in your advertising.
Click tracking (sometimes called site overlay), shows you a visual map of what your visitors use, read, and do on your site. This tool allows you to see patterns of interest – clicks - in an intuitive, visual way, whether it be text links or banner ads.
Click tracking will also show you ‘dark’ areas of your pages, where visitors click on unlinked images or other items - a great opportunity to add links.
If your analytics package offers heat tracking, be sure to take a look. With it, you can learn which parts of large image collect the most clicks, helpful for future graphic design.
Heat and click tracking are eye-candy – but they won’t give you everything you need. To go deeper, you need to determine whether essential calls to action (buy now, download this, sign-up) are getting the attention they deserve.
For this, you’ll want to refer to your internal link tracking and site path reports. In addition to learning what links potential customers click on, you can match to the search engine phrase they used to find you – a great indicator of the content they are seeking!
You can also discern whether they are new or returning visitors, how long they stayed, and which pages they lingered on.
A final note: when analyzing the path users took on your site, you will probably notice people are exiting the site after visiting one particular section or page.
This is vital information, as it means that the content drew them, but once there they found nothing to engage them - to inquire, buy or otherwise. Now you can add a compelling call to action or incentive, encouraging your visitors to exchange their information with you before they go.
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