Effective and ineffective websites
Now having your own website for many companies is not just a fashion trend, but rather an urgent need. Companies develop themselves or order websites in large quantities. However, many turn to the services of various kinds of SEO-specialists in the hope of getting a giant effect from the site.
But in fact, few people understand how and what kind of effect they are going to get from the site. In this topic, I will consider the issue of the effectiveness of sites for “small and medium businesses”: small companies that operate within their city or region and are sellers (manufacturers or resellers) of any product, such as radio stations or snowmobiles. But, in principle, the reasoning applies to any other type of web site, just the area of ​​small and medium business is closest to me for some reason.
Immediately I say that the article does not pretend to the ultimate truth, I am always happy with any comments and amendments.
')
The question of efficiency has already been raised in Habré , only there a person talks about the effectiveness of advertising, and not the website as a whole.
So, the company decided to create a website. First you need to decide what kind of information you need to place on the site to be effective. Naturally, the director wants to necessarily a page with his photo, interview, biography. Of course, you need the entire track record of the company, in which they participate in exhibitions, what awards they received.
But let us ask the question: does this information need a potential buyer who went to the site of the snowmobile dealer to look after the equipment? Not! He needs something completely different:
A site consisting of 5 pages about the company and 1 page with a mean table with a list of models, or even a link to the price in xls format is unlikely to bring many visitors. This is an inefficient site, and it’s not worth wasting time creating such a site. If only entertain director pride.
A site on which there are 3 pages about the company and 300 pages with a full catalog of products and open contacts is an effective site that allows you to decide on the choice of a particular model and order it immediately. This is a site that increases sales.
The site can not be effective if it is not visited. Many companies pay a fortune to SEO professionals to get their site up on some keywords. But how do they approach the choice of keywords that should be promoted? Basically, by the same principle, which is suitable for filling the site - “we want snowmobiles to be in the top 3 upon request”.
But if you think about what will be the promotion of this request? Nothing. People who came to the request "snowmobiles" do not necessarily want to buy it, and if they want it, they are not necessarily in the city where our seller is located. Thus, we get high attendance, but low conversion of visitors into buyers. It is expensive and inefficient to unwind on such requests.
So what kind of queries do we need? The most specific, for example, “Rotax snowmobiles in Kazan”. The person who came to such a request, certainly wants to buy a rotax snowmobile in Kazan. And it will most likely get from Yandex to the page of a specific snowmobile, where it will be able to evaluate all of its characteristics, make sure that this is exactly what he wanted to buy, and immediately order and buy it, by phone or at the address, because we made an effective website with good descriptions of our snowmobiles.
Moreover, promotion of such low-frequency inquiries is very simple and cheap, but at the same time very effective, because almost every person who comes by such a request is our potential client, and a convenient site makes it a client. To unwind on such requests, it is enough to place complete and detailed information about each product, and then literally within a week or another, the site will appear in the top 1-3 for most of the appropriate low-frequency queries in its region. Without any SEO-specialists (of course, if there is not too high competition in this industry)
Speaking of SEO specialists. I once worked with one such “expert”, and he argued that Yandex had been indexing sites for a very long time and adding them to its issue — about 3 months. Therefore, they posted congratulations from March 8 in January, so that by March Yandex added this greeting to the issue. In my opinion, natural insanity. I personally think that it’s enough to make a website according to Yandex’s recommendations on creating websites and then everything will work well and without all sorts of SEO- “specialists”
Well, now the most interesting part of the article is that we made a good site, filled it with detailed and relevant information, did everything according to Yandex recommendations, etc. Visitors went to us. How to evaluate now whether our site is effective?
It would seem that the obvious criterion of site effectiveness is attendance. Allegedly, if the site has a lot of visitors, it means it works well, it is effective. But in fact, efficiency and attendance are completely different concepts , both smooth and soft.
Attendance is just the number of visitors to the site. Attendance can be increased artificially, moving forward on different keywords, or buying traffic. But this site will not be effective and will not be profitable.
Comparing with the offline store, if you plant a monkey in a cage in the center of the cabin of a snowmobile, the attendance of the cabin will most likely increase. But will people who come to stare at the monkey, buy snowmobiles? Not! The number of people who come to buy a snowmobile, from such an action will not change, although attendance will increase.
Therefore, if you go to Google Analytics and see that your site has only 20-30 visitors per day, you should not be upset. Just think, how many people come to your salon to see snowmobiles in a day? The same 20-30 people. So, in fact, you doubled the number of people interested in buying a snowmobile and at the same time visiting your salon! So the site is quite effective.
High attendance does not mean greater efficiency.
Some people believe that the depth of viewing, or the time spent on the site, is an indicator of the effectiveness of the site. Supposedly, if a person walks through the site and looks at the pages, then he is interested in the site. But this is not always true.
Think about it, maybe your site is so intricate navigation that people find what they are looking for, only 5-6 page views and because of this, they spend a lot of time on the site? Or maybe they don’t find what they were looking for and leave the site? Maybe looking at Google analytics at the number of “6 pages viewed per 1 visit on average, 1 visit duration - 10 minutes” you should not be happy that your site is interesting for users, but on the contrary, you can sound the alarm that nothing is possible on your site to find?
And vice versa, if the average number of pages viewed is 1-3 and the average time on the site is 2-3 minutes, you do not need to sound the alarm that the site is not interesting to anyone, perhaps you should be happy on the contrary that people quickly find the necessary information?
Obviously, the bounce rate, or the percentage of people who left after visiting the first page, in our case is also not an indicator of effectiveness. Because people who came from Yandex immediately to the product page, found all the necessary information on it and immediately went off as “refusers”, although in fact they are just effective visitors.
Greater viewing depth does not mean greater efficiency.
How to evaluate the effectiveness of the site, if all the "standard" indicators, as it turned out, mean almost nothing?
This is the best method. You just need to ask the managers when selling to find out where the person came from. Thus, you can immediately estimate how many real buyers the site has brought to you. At the same time, it is not necessary to force the buyer to fill in a huge questionnaire, simply ask “if it's not a secret, how did you hear about us?”. Such a question will not cause a negative on the part of the buyer.
It is important to keep track of what requests people come from. If people come for non-targeted requests (for example, instead of snowmobiles, they are looking for service centers or some other information), it is necessary to review the information contained on the site. Such people are trash visitors and you don’t have to rejoice at the increase in the number of visits. On the other hand, if the number of people arriving at targeted requests falls, then again we must take action.
It should be understood that a website selling snowmobiles in Kazan will most likely not have an attendance of 1,000 people per day, because they simply do not buy so many snowmobiles in Kazan. If the number of visitors is approximately equal to the sales of snowmobiles and most of the visitors come by targeted requests, then the site is quite effective.
It is necessary to analyze the entry and exit pages. If people enter on some wrong pages (for example, more people come to the page with a description of the company than on pages with a description of snowmobiles) - most likely there are some problems on the site. Similarly, if people leave the site in the middle of some chains (for example, a person came to the main site, used the site search and left, instead of going to one of the search results) - most likely there are some problems on the site (the person did not find something searched - how did he get to the site then, or the search results are poorly visible among tons of ads, etc.).
If a person enters the necessary pages (for us, these are pages with descriptions of snowmobiles) and leaves the pages where it is logical to complete the path through the site (for example, from the contact information page or the product page, if there is contact information on it), then the site is sufficient effective
If there are any targeted actions on your site, for example, adding a product to the cart or going to a page with contact information, they should be monitored. In all statistics systems this can be done, and this is necessary because so you get a picture: how many people are interested in your contact information, and what percentage of visitors adds a product to the basket.
Learn more about goals in Google Analytics
But in fact, few people understand how and what kind of effect they are going to get from the site. In this topic, I will consider the issue of the effectiveness of sites for “small and medium businesses”: small companies that operate within their city or region and are sellers (manufacturers or resellers) of any product, such as radio stations or snowmobiles. But, in principle, the reasoning applies to any other type of web site, just the area of ​​small and medium business is closest to me for some reason.
Immediately I say that the article does not pretend to the ultimate truth, I am always happy with any comments and amendments.
')
The question of efficiency has already been raised in Habré , only there a person talks about the effectiveness of advertising, and not the website as a whole.
Content effective site
So, the company decided to create a website. First you need to decide what kind of information you need to place on the site to be effective. Naturally, the director wants to necessarily a page with his photo, interview, biography. Of course, you need the entire track record of the company, in which they participate in exhibitions, what awards they received.
But let us ask the question: does this information need a potential buyer who went to the site of the snowmobile dealer to look after the equipment? Not! He needs something completely different:
- Catalog of models, which are in stock and which are on order
- Exact prices
- Detailed product descriptions, photos
- Contact information, location map
A site consisting of 5 pages about the company and 1 page with a mean table with a list of models, or even a link to the price in xls format is unlikely to bring many visitors. This is an inefficient site, and it’s not worth wasting time creating such a site. If only entertain director pride.
A site on which there are 3 pages about the company and 300 pages with a full catalog of products and open contacts is an effective site that allows you to decide on the choice of a particular model and order it immediately. This is a site that increases sales.
"Website promotion
The site can not be effective if it is not visited. Many companies pay a fortune to SEO professionals to get their site up on some keywords. But how do they approach the choice of keywords that should be promoted? Basically, by the same principle, which is suitable for filling the site - “we want snowmobiles to be in the top 3 upon request”.
But if you think about what will be the promotion of this request? Nothing. People who came to the request "snowmobiles" do not necessarily want to buy it, and if they want it, they are not necessarily in the city where our seller is located. Thus, we get high attendance, but low conversion of visitors into buyers. It is expensive and inefficient to unwind on such requests.
So what kind of queries do we need? The most specific, for example, “Rotax snowmobiles in Kazan”. The person who came to such a request, certainly wants to buy a rotax snowmobile in Kazan. And it will most likely get from Yandex to the page of a specific snowmobile, where it will be able to evaluate all of its characteristics, make sure that this is exactly what he wanted to buy, and immediately order and buy it, by phone or at the address, because we made an effective website with good descriptions of our snowmobiles.
Moreover, promotion of such low-frequency inquiries is very simple and cheap, but at the same time very effective, because almost every person who comes by such a request is our potential client, and a convenient site makes it a client. To unwind on such requests, it is enough to place complete and detailed information about each product, and then literally within a week or another, the site will appear in the top 1-3 for most of the appropriate low-frequency queries in its region. Without any SEO-specialists (of course, if there is not too high competition in this industry)
Speaking of SEO specialists. I once worked with one such “expert”, and he argued that Yandex had been indexing sites for a very long time and adding them to its issue — about 3 months. Therefore, they posted congratulations from March 8 in January, so that by March Yandex added this greeting to the issue. In my opinion, natural insanity. I personally think that it’s enough to make a website according to Yandex’s recommendations on creating websites and then everything will work well and without all sorts of SEO- “specialists”
Imaginary performance criteria
Well, now the most interesting part of the article is that we made a good site, filled it with detailed and relevant information, did everything according to Yandex recommendations, etc. Visitors went to us. How to evaluate now whether our site is effective?
Attendance
It would seem that the obvious criterion of site effectiveness is attendance. Allegedly, if the site has a lot of visitors, it means it works well, it is effective. But in fact, efficiency and attendance are completely different concepts , both smooth and soft.
Attendance is just the number of visitors to the site. Attendance can be increased artificially, moving forward on different keywords, or buying traffic. But this site will not be effective and will not be profitable.
Comparing with the offline store, if you plant a monkey in a cage in the center of the cabin of a snowmobile, the attendance of the cabin will most likely increase. But will people who come to stare at the monkey, buy snowmobiles? Not! The number of people who come to buy a snowmobile, from such an action will not change, although attendance will increase.
Therefore, if you go to Google Analytics and see that your site has only 20-30 visitors per day, you should not be upset. Just think, how many people come to your salon to see snowmobiles in a day? The same 20-30 people. So, in fact, you doubled the number of people interested in buying a snowmobile and at the same time visiting your salon! So the site is quite effective.
High attendance does not mean greater efficiency.
View depth and time on the site, bounce rate
Some people believe that the depth of viewing, or the time spent on the site, is an indicator of the effectiveness of the site. Supposedly, if a person walks through the site and looks at the pages, then he is interested in the site. But this is not always true.
Think about it, maybe your site is so intricate navigation that people find what they are looking for, only 5-6 page views and because of this, they spend a lot of time on the site? Or maybe they don’t find what they were looking for and leave the site? Maybe looking at Google analytics at the number of “6 pages viewed per 1 visit on average, 1 visit duration - 10 minutes” you should not be happy that your site is interesting for users, but on the contrary, you can sound the alarm that nothing is possible on your site to find?
And vice versa, if the average number of pages viewed is 1-3 and the average time on the site is 2-3 minutes, you do not need to sound the alarm that the site is not interesting to anyone, perhaps you should be happy on the contrary that people quickly find the necessary information?
Obviously, the bounce rate, or the percentage of people who left after visiting the first page, in our case is also not an indicator of effectiveness. Because people who came from Yandex immediately to the product page, found all the necessary information on it and immediately went off as “refusers”, although in fact they are just effective visitors.
Greater viewing depth does not mean greater efficiency.
Real performance criteria
How to evaluate the effectiveness of the site, if all the "standard" indicators, as it turned out, mean almost nothing?
Sales Questionnaire
This is the best method. You just need to ask the managers when selling to find out where the person came from. Thus, you can immediately estimate how many real buyers the site has brought to you. At the same time, it is not necessary to force the buyer to fill in a huge questionnaire, simply ask “if it's not a secret, how did you hear about us?”. Such a question will not cause a negative on the part of the buyer.
Searches
It is important to keep track of what requests people come from. If people come for non-targeted requests (for example, instead of snowmobiles, they are looking for service centers or some other information), it is necessary to review the information contained on the site. Such people are trash visitors and you don’t have to rejoice at the increase in the number of visits. On the other hand, if the number of people arriving at targeted requests falls, then again we must take action.
It should be understood that a website selling snowmobiles in Kazan will most likely not have an attendance of 1,000 people per day, because they simply do not buy so many snowmobiles in Kazan. If the number of visitors is approximately equal to the sales of snowmobiles and most of the visitors come by targeted requests, then the site is quite effective.
Login and Logout Pages
It is necessary to analyze the entry and exit pages. If people enter on some wrong pages (for example, more people come to the page with a description of the company than on pages with a description of snowmobiles) - most likely there are some problems on the site. Similarly, if people leave the site in the middle of some chains (for example, a person came to the main site, used the site search and left, instead of going to one of the search results) - most likely there are some problems on the site (the person did not find something searched - how did he get to the site then, or the search results are poorly visible among tons of ads, etc.).
If a person enters the necessary pages (for us, these are pages with descriptions of snowmobiles) and leaves the pages where it is logical to complete the path through the site (for example, from the contact information page or the product page, if there is contact information on it), then the site is sufficient effective
Targeted action
If there are any targeted actions on your site, for example, adding a product to the cart or going to a page with contact information, they should be monitored. In all statistics systems this can be done, and this is necessary because so you get a picture: how many people are interested in your contact information, and what percentage of visitors adds a product to the basket.
Learn more about goals in Google Analytics
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/116990/
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