What are the most important site analytics

[steve1021]

Hey Everyone

With so much data out there, especially when it comes to website activity and Google Analytics I was wondering if there was a sort of "Top 10" in regards to the web stats that matter most to dealers? Does it go beyond uniques, referring sites, exit pages? Trying to get a better sense of what really matters and what is just information overload.

 

[CAORYAN]

Excellent question! Analytics can indeed help your business in so many ways. It can tell you, you are headed in the wrong direction or the right direction. The mixture of Google analytics and web master tools is very powerful.

A few things to look at......
1) Keywords of course. I always find a new search term by checking out my keywords. You will be amazed, no matter how much homework you do there is always a keyword or keywords that you would have never thought of. Do your research and you can optimize your site better for those if they are worthy.
2) Location is important. Find where you site visitors are when they find your site. You may find trends that can be used to your advantage.
3) Bounce Rate is extremely important. Why? Because rumor has it google takes the bounce rate into consideration. I am sure someone will argue that but I don't think anyone has hard proof either way. I have a site that is 5% and I have sites that are 56%. Bounce rate will be when someone lands on your site and leaves. They did not spend time on the site nor did they visit additional pages after landing on your landing page. Thats why it's important to have your homepage as a launching pad. Look at googles home page.....who is going to spend more than a few second there?
4) Most visited pages are important. I found that if you add call to action on those pages you will convert better. Give your site visitors what they want on that page but also offer additional info. There is a reason people go to that page all the time. Find out why and work on your conversion on that page.
5) Visitor trending (Visits) This is great because it will explain what I can tell you. Majority of your traffic is Monday through Friday. Your peak hours are 10am to 4pm.
6) Traffic Source is obviously a good one for many reasons. Knowing where you get your traffic is great. if you get someone from a forum you may want to visit that forum and offer them coupons on parts, service and purchase.
7) Content by Title is very cool. I suggest checking this link out. He can do a better job of explaining than I can.
8) Site Overlay is a pretty cool feature that allows you to see how your layout effects click through. This will work well with goals.
9) Goals are important because you can track the success of your goals are. Your conversion etc...
10) Webmaster tools is a must have! This is great because you can see how many links each page has, what keywords you rank for and how you rank, crawl errors, and meta,title and more suggestions.

There is an easy top ten for you. Hope this helped!

Didn't check spelling was in hurry! sorry!

 

[Alex Snyder]

Steve - you will probably find different answers for different things. Ryan has definitely listed some very big hot points. Here are some of the ways I use analytics from our websites (a lot of overlap in what Ryan posted):

1. Visits - to gauge how well our marketing efforts are working I look for increases in visits
2. Time on site - to gauge how engaging our site is I want to see the time on site increasing each month
3. Time on page - I want to see which pages people are spending the most time on
4. Top Pages viewed - what are people looking at the most? How do I take something from those pages and put them throughout the site?
5. Least viewed pages - what is wrong with these pages?
6. Bouncerate - is our marketing not speaking the same language our website is? Why are people coming and going quickly. Or are they coming and staying?
7. Form conversion rate - are people engaged enough by your site to submit a lead?
8. Referrer reports - who is sending people to you?
9. Keywords - what are people typing into a search engine to find you?
10. Search Engine Positions - which page of search phrase are you placing on? Is this rising or decreasing?

Inventory:

1. Most viewed vehicles - what are people looking for? Maybe you should stock more of it, or is it because a particular car you're carrying is rare - is it because you priced it right? Did it sell quickly? Or is it still sitting on the lot?
2. Least viewed vehicles - is it a really expensive car? Do the pictures suck?
3. Top vehicles forms were submitted on - same as the above, but this can help you gauge whether your sales process is or isn't up to par depending on how quickly the car sold after receiving leads on it.
4. Aging reports vs. Viewed Reports - if you have it, you can see if your oldest cars are getting the least views and start formulating the questions as to why that is.
5. Photo/Comment report vs. Views vs. Leads - same thing as #4. But this time you can see that you have photos and comments on a car, but it isn't selling - what's wrong with the photos or comments?

SEM/SEO Reports:

1. Visits by search engine - which search engine is sending you the most/least visitors? Should you concentrate more on one over the other? Should you put more effort into a different one?
2. Form submissions from a search engine - did your SEM Campaign language speak the same language as the page you're landing someone on? Is the landing page compelling enough?
3. Keyword effectiveness against PPC costs - is it better to concentrate on short or long-tail search terms for your market?

....I'm getting pulled away, so I have to cut this short.

 

[CAORYAN]

Good stuff Alex. Some people will not agree but I am a big fan of multiple domains for advertising. Lets say you run an ad in the paper and you want to know how effective it is. You use tracking numbers why wouldn't you use a custom domain for tracking. With analytics you can track how many people got to your site from that domain. Oh, you will want to do a redirect or forward to your site. This will help you because if you don't get calls or hits on your site you know it was bad advertising. If you get hits but no conversion you need to tweak your ad or your site. If you get hits and they convert you may want to do more of it.

By the way you can now get call tracking numbers that rotate with java script. In english this means you can have one number show up if they come from a specific URL and another show up for a different URL. If you come from google you see 800-999-1111 from yahoo you see 800-999-1110. Get it?

Listen, If you have a decent budget I highly suggest contacting omniture for analytics.

 

[joe.pistell]

Hey Everyone

With so much data out there, especially when it comes to website activity and Google Analytics I was wondering if there was a sort of "Top 10" in regards to the web stats that matter most to dealers? Does it go beyond uniques, referring sites, exit pages? Trying to get a better sense of what really matters and what is just information overload.

Steve,
I don't have enough time to give you anything but a summary, but, this is how my (sick) mind works...

How much potential is there?
Need to establish a base line.

Number One Report.
Create post-sale survey (example below).

Number Two Report.
At End of Month, Divide number of unique visitors by number of sales.

These two reports will give you an idea on how much upside there is to "working your crowd". It will also help you give you a focus on what stats can help you sell more cars.

Report One will show you (and management) that 80-95% of your buyers were on your home site before they bought.

Report Two will show you that you only sell .5% to 1.5% of your dealership's website audience.

Create a "what if" scenario:
How many more cars could you sell for every increase of one tenth of one percent?

INTERNET MARKETING DEPARTMENTS

MARKETING: Site architecture

• There are traffic paths to your site
• Traffic while in your site

MERCHANDISING: On page Merchandising (aka specials, comments, coupons, etc)

• People that fill out forms

THE BOTTOM LINE

• People that buy cars from you

Post Sale Survey:
A very short and simple one page survey, Multiple Choice answers, made mandatory at delivery. A few on my survey are:

• Have you bought from us before?
• If yes, How many vehicles?
• As best as you can recall, how long have you been looking for a new vehicle?
• While you were car shopping, where did you get most of your ideas? (check all that apply)
• How did you hear about us? (check all that apply)
• Do you consider yourself a frequent internet user?
• Did you visit internet automobile shopping sites? (please check all that apply)
• Did you visit our website, ________.com?
• How did you locate our website, ________.com?
• Did you find ________.com helpful?
• How can we make ________.com better?

hope this helps...

 

[Brent Palen]

After reading this thread I started checking on my analytics. One thing I ran accross is my bounce rate went way up over the last 3 months. It was hanging around the 6% range but is now up to 12 and 13.

So what is an average bounce rate? Should I be alarmed?

 

[Tony T]

Generally speaking as your traffic rises so too will your bounce rate. If you know which page or pages this happens on, then you can adjust accordingly.

A couple of questions to ask yourself:
Where did these visitors come from? (If they all come from the same place then this place might be of low value to you. You might want to send visitors from from this place to a different landing page.)

Can I adjust my link structure on the landing pages to refer them somewhere else on my site?

Just my quick thoughts.

 

[flosho]

Number One Report.
Create post-sale survey (example below).

Number Two Report.
At End of Month, Divide number of unique visitors by number of sales.

Report Two will show you that you only sell .5% to 1.5% of your dealership's website audience.


hope this helps...

Joe, I've created a small survey for my customers, would it be cool to send it to you in a pm for your feedback when you get a chance?

Also I've been looking at my analytics with regards to "report two" and my numbers were between .35% and .97% so looks like there may be some room for improvement as always, and we are a much smaller dealership (roughly 30-40 cars for sale usually).

This place is such an valuable info source for me!

 

[cmjerry4531]

Number One Report.
Create post-sale survey (example below).

Number Two Report.
At End of Month, Divide number of unique visitors by number of sales.

These two reports will give you an idea on how much upside there is to "working your crowd". It will also help you give you a focus on what stats can help you sell more cars.

Report One will show you (and management) that 80-95% of your buyers were on your home site before they bought.

Report Two will show you that you only sell .5% to 1.5% of your dealership's website audience.

Create a "what if" scenario:
How many more cars could you sell for every increase of one tenth of one percent?

INTERNET MARKETING DEPARTMENTS

MARKETING: Site architecture

• There are traffic paths to your site
• Traffic while in your site

MERCHANDISING: On page Merchandising (aka specials, comments, coupons, etc)

• People that fill out forms

THE BOTTOM LINE

• People that buy cars from you

Is the second one the number of cars sold from internet leads generated from your website, or total sales?

Also, what are people getting for monthly unique visitors? I'm at 10,000 unique visitors a month, with filtering out my dealerships IP addresses, but I have no bench mark. If that's low, then I'll use the excuse that I'm in Montana, where there are less than 1 Million People

 

[cmjerry4531]

Number One Report.
Create post-sale survey (example below).

Number Two Report.
At End of Month, Divide number of unique visitors by number of sales.

These two reports will give you an idea on how much upside there is to "working your crowd". It will also help you give you a focus on what stats can help you sell more cars.

Report One will show you (and management) that 80-95% of your buyers were on your home site before they bought.

Report Two will show you that you only sell .5% to 1.5% of your dealership's website audience.

Create a "what if" scenario:
How many more cars could you sell for every increase of one tenth of one percent?

INTERNET MARKETING DEPARTMENTS

MARKETING: Site architecture

• There are traffic paths to your site
• Traffic while in your site

MERCHANDISING: On page Merchandising (aka specials, comments, coupons, etc)

• People that fill out forms

THE BOTTOM LINE

• People that buy cars from you

Is the second one the number of cars sold from internet leads generated from your website, or total sales?

Also, what are people getting for monthly unique visitors? I'm at 10,000 unique visitors a month, with filtering out my dealerships IP addresses, but I have no bench mark. If that's low, then I'll use the excuse that I'm in Montana, where there are less than 1 Million People