Just Where Do You Think You’re Going?

MoreVisibility - March 30, 2007

MoreVisibility Analytics Blog

Listen, let’s be realistic here. You will never have 100% of the visitors to your website all convert, or all fill out your form. It’s just impossible, even if you have the best website in the history of the internet. People like to “window shop” or comparison shop before they actually purchase something. But, we all knew this already.

Now that we have that out of the way, I can tell you that you probably can improve upon the percentage of visitors who are leaving your website altogether, and probably improve upon the percentage of visitors who eventually convert. In fact, it’s not a probability, it’s most likely a fact, jack.

So, how do you do it? The first thing you’re going to have to do is take a good look at the pages on your website. Are they what’s called “user-friendly”? Does it take forever and a day to load? Does it not offer a lot of useful information? Does it display 5 pop-ups, including my favorite “Click YES to bookmark this site!” JavaScript message?

In some cases, you may be doing everything correctly, and still not see the conversions you’re looking for. But, thanks to the good people at Google, and special thanks to the good people on the Google Analytics team, we can see what users are doing on each individual page. With one report in particular, you can see the exact number of Exits on each page, and what the Exit Percentage is on each page of your website. It’s a very easy report to look at, and it’s located here:

Content Optimization >> Navigational Analysis >> Top Exit Points

A few notes to keep in mind about this report:

1. Because your homepage is usually, by far, the most visited page, you can make a “logical assumption” that it will also accumulate the most Exits. This doesn’t automatically get your homepage off the hook, but if you have a good, clean, properly formatted / tagged / optimized homepage, you shouldn’t worry too heavily if your homepage leads in Exits.
2. Hopefully for you, your Conversion Page (“Thank You” page) will be at least in the top 5, or top 10, if your site has a lot of pages. While reaching the Conversion Page of your website is your ultimate Goal, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it should be the very end of the user’s experience with your site. Add some links or a nice graphic on the actual Conversion Page, inviting the user to stick around for a little bit.
3. You can Cross-Segment each Exit Point by any number of variables. This is very useful. For example, Cross-Segment your homepage by Browser, or by Platform. Maybe something on your homepage is causing visitors using a certain Browser type, Platform, or even a certain version of Flash that is interfering with the user’s experience?

Enjoy, and Good Luck!