Everything About Web Analytics Analysis
Today, more people look for attorneys online than in the newspaper, phone book, television, and radio combined. It takes more than just an accurate or frequently updated website to bring in clients today. Doing web analytics analysis (not just reporting) can expand your law firm's client base and identify potential areas for website improvement. Whether you're looking to reduce your web analytics bounce rate (the number of people who leave your website after just a quick glance) or want to know how to use analytics to develop your site for mobile web traffic, this guide can help.
The Difference Between Web Analytics Analysis and Reporting
Most law firm websites today, especially for larger firms, do some form of web analytics. However, there's more than one way to use analytics tools, and the sad truth is that most firms aren't doing the best they could do with their information. Instead of performing real web analytics analysis, many firms simply look at reporting tools without really understanding what the numbers say about their business.
Web analytics reporting is easy with today's software packages: you just make a few clicks, and you'll see a report on your dashboard that illustrates one or more metrics. But web analytics analysis goes deeper: for example, instead of just finding out that you have a high web analytics bounce rate through reporting, you can analyze your bounce rate to see what's causing potential clients to leave.
Web Analytics Analysis: What Your Web Analytics Bounce Rate Says About You
One of the biggest website statistics that can stop law firms from implementing their marketing plans is the bounce rate—how many clients leave too soon to see enough content to convert. When you want to reduce your web analytics bounce rate, it's important to know why your bounce problem is occurring if you want to come up with the right solution. Guesswork leads to wasted time and effort, and web analytics analysis tools allow you to get to the real answer.
To figure out what's causing your bounce problem, here are some things to check. The web analytics bounce rate can be measured in several ways. The default for most web analytics analysis software is looking at clients who have visited only one page of your website. But what if that doesn't represent your true web analytics bounce rate? If someone stays for several minutes, watches a video on the first page, and then calls your firm using the phone number, that's not a bounce—it's a conversion.
In order to get a better view of what your true web analytics bounce rate is, consider looking at the difference between reports from the default “bounce rate” and those for site visitors who stay 10 seconds or less. If the numbers are about the same, you can safely assume that the default represents your true bounce rate. If clients are staying on one page for a long time before clicking away, though, you may want to focus on making calls to action or attractive links that keep potential clients clicking.
Lowering Your Web Analytics Bounce Rate
There are several ways to use web analytics analysis to lower the number of potential clients who bounce away. Keep in mind that one of the biggest reasons that your web analytics bounce rate may be high is that your website is not sufficiently search engine optimized. If a large number of people are arriving at your website through searches for irrelevant search terms, your web analytics bounce rate will increase every time they click and realize you're not what they're looking for. Make sure to keep your content clean and focused on your firm's strengths, and verify that any keywords for PPC advertising are related to your firm's practice areas.
Another way to lower your web analytics bounce rate, if your firm uses primarily PPC advertising, is to use negative keywords. Web analytics analysis may show that a number of people are bouncing from your website after searching for (for example) “free divorce help in Phoenix.” If you want to make money, you'll need to avoid paying for clicks from people seeking free services. After you add some negative keywords (like “free” or “sliding scale”), you may see a significantly lower web analytics bounce rate.
If you still have a high bounce rate, odds are your content is the problem. You may want to conduct user surveys or focus groups to help your web analytics analysis and find a content solution. With some experimentation, you can usually significantly reduce the web analytics bounce rate through diligent analysis and creative problem-solving.
Lowering Your Web Analytics Bounce Rate for Mobile Traffic
The mobile revolution has significantly impacted web analytics analysis. Within the next year, up to a quarter of all web traffic will come from mobile devices, and if your firm's not ready, you could see high web analytics bounce rates that just climb higher as time goes on.
The best way to make sure that your bounce rate stays low when clients search for a law firm on their phones is to redirect clients to a useable mobile site. Don't neglect content on these mobile web pages: while you can make content more abbreviated in order to attract more mobile clients, if there's not enough quality information most people will still just leave.
It's particularly valuable for law firms to have mobile websites. When a potential client searches in this way, they already have their phone in hand—and all it will take is a quick touch to call your firm. This is the perfect environment for generating conversions, so make sure that any conversations your firm has about web analytics analysis includes mobile marketing.
Web Analytics Analysis: What Comes Next?
The biggest trends in web analytics today involve mobile traffic and social media marketing. If your firm wants to get ahead of the competition, you need to keep updated about the latest web analytics analysis tools. Because the field of web analytics has changed so much in just a few short years (very few analytics companies even existed a decade ago), consider analytics to be another area that will require continuing education if your firm is to continue to prosper in a web-centric era.
