Visit Characterization is a valuable web metric that allows businesses to identify the actions completed by website visitors, as well as insight into how they came into their websites, and how they left. There are several metrics included within Visit Characterization, all with unique insights which can be leveraged by businesses. Let's review them below!
Entry Page
Entry page data shares the first page in which a consumer visited to reach your website; Entry pages are presented as a list of URLs, ranging from the most commonly entered-through page to the least (ClickInsight, N.D).
ThinkMetrics explains, "Entry Pages are important because they are the primary point at which visitors check their Tolerance Threshold." (ThinkMetrics, N.D). Knowing which pages are what visitors are first exposed to, allows businesses to optimize these pages to give clear business awareness, and the information which they would wish visitors to see upon first being exposed to their site. Additionally, businesses may also leverage this information, to consider utilizing these pages in marketing efforts, such as further driving traffic to these pages during paid advertising efforts.
Landing Page
Landing pages are pages that provide information content, calls to actors and serve as a touchpoint for visitors (ClickInsight, N.D). Landing pages can serve a variety of functions, but the overarching theme is all landing pages relay important business information to visitors, that will either influence or directly lead to conversions. Knowing landing page metrics gives businesses the insight they need to know if their messaging choices are indeed effective or ineffective in properly educating, nurturing, and/or converting consumers as needed.
Exit Page
Exit Pages is the last page on a site accessed during a visit, being the last thing a visitor sees before leaving (ClickInsight, N.D). Exit page data can be extremely insightful to businesses, in understanding the buyer journey. Ideally, exit pages are pages where customers complete a conversion action. If exit pages are landing pages where consumers are not completing actions - it allows businesses to reanalyze these pages and possibly make correctional changes that improve visitor experiences, and conversion funnels (Akhtar, 2020).
Visit Duration
Visit duration gives insight into how long a visitor stays on your website. Visit duration gives insight into user engagement - average session duration contributes to understanding engagement by illustrating how long they stay on your site, considering your business (Spinutech, 2015). By maintaining notice of visit duration, businesses can strategize how engaging their website content is, and make adjustments accordingly to improve engagement.
Click-through and Click-through rate
Click-through refers to the number of times a link was clicked by a visitor, the conversion rate of this can be calculated by dividing by the number of times that link was clicked over the times it was viewed (ClickInsight, N.D). Much like visit duration, clickthroughs helps gain insight into user engagement of content. Click-throughs can be on backlinks, and call to action buttons on which you wish visitors to take action. Be it to learn more, and engage in the content through backlinks - or through an add to cart button, or to get to important landing pages on your navigation bar - one can gain more focus on what content or actions are low performing or high performing based on average click-through rates.
Visit Characterization for Business Decisions
Depending on objectives, businesses can utilize specific Visit Characterizations to measure the effectiveness of specific tactics, content, pages, and campaigns on their site, or even for their overall business. However, by monitoring all Visit Characterizations steadily, businesses can paint a larger picture of their online presence performance and business conversions through online sales by having a wide picture of visitor engagement. Businesses can also strategize how to improve, remove, or shift content, communications, and partnerships through these insightful metrics.
References:
ClickInsight. (No Date). Web Analytics Definitions. Retrieved from: https://www.clickinsight.ca/res/web-analytics-definitions-3#visit-referrer
Hi Nathalie,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I enjoyed reading your take on entry and exit pages. I also think click thru rates are a key metric as well.
-Lauren
Hi Nathalie,
ReplyDeleteThese metrics are all valuable. Where people come into your site is incredibly important, and where they come from is even more important as that will often impact how long they stay on your site.
On the flipside, where they leave from (exit pages) are also key as we want to know what they do on the site before they do leave. If people are leaving consistently on a specific page, that is almost certainly an issue.