By Conrad Saam
Special to the Legal Technology Blog
A while ago, I wrote about the importance of using Web site analytics tools to track the success of your online marketing efforts. Google offers a free tool (appropriately named Google Analytics) that many attorneys use. If you don’t have Google Analytics or a similar tracking system installed on your site, stop reading this and do so -- it's free! However, in some cases the lawyers I’ve spoken with are confused and overwhelmed with the tool. What do all the numbers mean? What are the important numbers? What should I be looking at and what should I be ignoring? Let me try to offer some clarity in this post.
WEB ANALYTICS LEXICON
A/B Testing: testing two different versions of a page to optimize a given outcome. Google enables this through their free "Website Optimizer" functionality.
Bounce Rate: The percentage of people who see one page on a Web site and then leave. High bounce rates indicate pages that are highly useful in bringing in new traffic, but poor at retaining that traffic. Bounce rates can also be used to evaluate the quality of traffic coming from a marketing channel -- low bounce rates indicate a highly engaged group of users.
Conversion Event: The percentage of people who undertake a given action. Traditionally, conversions relate to e-commerce, i.e., how many people purchase a given product once they’ve browsed it. Google analytics can display any click-through rate between pages as a conversion event -- so you could track the number of people who sign up for a newsletter, for example.
Direct Traffic: Traffic that is either typed into the address bar or is bookmarked. Generally reflects brand awareness and/or loyalty.
Natural Search: Traffic delivered by search engines.
Referring Sites: Traffic that is generated from a link on another site.
Visits: A single visit to a Web site; not to be confused with visitors (below) -- a single visitor may have multiple visits. "Visits" may also be referred to as "unique users."
Visitors: (also called "Absolute Unique Visitors") The number of individuals who view a site over the given time period. A single visitor, may have multiple "visits" during a given time period. "Visitors" may also be referred to as "sessions."
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
The amount of data from Web site analytics tools can be overwhelming. At Avvo, we manage massive volumes of data by concentrating all of these figures into a series of key performance indicators -- those vital metrics by which we judge success. KPI are reviewed on a regular basis. While every law firm has a unique situation, there are some common metrics that are important.
Visitors: Is the number of people coming to your site increasing or decreasing? How many visitors are worth your effort?
Content: Learn which pages house your most popular content and what content is completely ignored. If you want more car accident cases, yet no one is reading your car accident pages, perhaps your marketing efforts need to be redirected. Note: Google Analytics displays the homepage as a slash ("/") -- I'm not sure why the people who brought us GoogleMaps can’t relabel the slash with "homepage."
Referring Sites: Any online marketing you are engaged in should show up in the referring sites report. Track the number of visits being generated and the quality of those visits (bounce rate, number of pageviews and conversion events.) Whenever you are spending money on online advertising, divide your advertising cost by the number visitors (not visits) to derive a cost per visitor number. For example, let’s say you spend $1,400 a year for a legal directory listing and Google Analytics reports 7 visitors over the past month, your cost per visitor is $16.67 ($1,400/12/7).
Map Overlay: Law is predominately a localized practice. Use the map overlay to see how much of your Web site’s traffic comes from areas you actually serve. If you are in a hyperlocal market (say DUI defense) the percentage of local traffic should stay above 90 percent.
AdWords integration: If you are spending money on pay-per-click campaigns with Google Adwords, you must track the quality (bounce rate, page views and conversion events) of this very expensive traffic.
Fortunately, Google Analytics offers a seamless integration with a Google AdWords account, which provides extensive drill down capability.
Conrad Saam is the senior marketing manager at Avvo. Prior to Avvo, Mr. Saam's experience includes numerous awarding-winning interactive projects for clients including Disney, Nickelodeon, Lego, MTV, Ford, Macromedia, Microsoft, Kraft Foods, AOL, McDonalds, Mattel and Napster. He is a sought after speaker on interactive marketing and has been featured in publications including USA Today and The New York Times.
