The next level of landing page analytics

Last week we posted a few pointers on landing page analytics for beginners. At the basic level in analytics we look at things like unique visitors, bounce rate, and conversion rate. Taking those metrics and going a step further will provide you with even better data for understanding what turns clicks into conversions. 

At this higher level we look at things like:

• The Conversion Funnel - Look at each step from click through conversion to see where people are bailing, come up with hypothesis for why, and determine appropriate measures to correct the problem.
   
• Geo-trends - See how visitors from different regions (countries/states/provinces/cities) are converting differently. This might influence your buy, or your marketing plans.
   
• Media Types - Banners, PPC ads, E-mail, and all other types of media will send traffic that will convert at different rates. Use your analytics to determine which types are converting the highest. Once you know this information you can decide if you want to pump up the traffic from those types since they converts so well, or if you want to focus on improving conversions from the lower performing sources. 
   
• Traffic Sources - Segmenting traffic based on media types is good, but segmenting based on unique sources of traffic is even better. For example, don’t just look at PPC overall, instead compare Bing, Google, Yahoo to find trends, differences, similarities, etc. Don’t just look at your ad buy overall, look at the individual placements to find gold.
   
• Microconversions - Soft conversions or microconversions often lead to hard conversions, so it’s important to track this data too. Look at how many people who download a white paper go on to make the purchase, or how many people who watch a video go on to download the white paper and then make the purchase. You get the idea. Optimizing your microconversions will drive hard conversions in the long run.

• Traffic Trends - See if your users are converting at different percentages based on the day of the week, or the time of day and then determine how to use that information to drive more conversions. 

• User behavior - Probably one of my favorite things to look at. What are visitors doing on your pages, and how does their behavior intersect with conversions? You’ll find things like ‘visitors who do X go on to convert’. Or ‘visitors from this traffic source click on that, while visitors from that traffic source click on this’. You can use this information to optimize for the desired behavior that leads to a conversion. Fun stuff!

This is just a sample of the way you can slice and dice your landing page analytics, but you can see it all comes down to some form of traffic segmentation.

What are you currently analyzing, and how is it working for you?