I see many times people looking at the above report and when they spot a big bounce rate  they panic. They start screaming the page is good for nothing as only 17% of the people stay on the website while the others are leaving.

Sorry to tell you, but no, it’s not really like that.

First, bounce rate is not calculated in reference to page views but to visits. To look at the above report and say that 83.33% of  1681 people bounced is simply wrong. Just as it is to say that 83.33% of 1427 bounced (if you relate to unique views).

When (re)launching a website, every department of a company focuses on 2 big objectives:

• How not to loose what we have gained so far
• How to make things better than before

Everybody is planing and working like crazy for the above objectives, then the new website gets launched and suddenly, all eyes are on you: the web analyst. After all, who else can answer those questions better than you?

It’s not a very good idea to wait till everything finishes and get the tracking going at the end… nope, not wise at all. You’d rather make sure you will be able to answer the above questions in detail and some more. Based on a project we have recently worked on, here’s our web analyst’s technical checklist for (re)launching a website:

Web analytics tools are not about accuracy. No matter how much you try you will never get 100% accurate data. Don’t worry about it… you don’t even need it. The power of the data stays in trends and they can be satisfied with 95% or 90% or even less accuracy.

However, one thing is 100% sure in any web analytics tool out there. When a user is being identified as a returning user, you can bet on it that that’s how it is. Don’t get me wrong here. There are returning visitors that your tool sees as new ones (they delete their cookies) but all identified as returning are definitely users that have previously visited your website.

Custom variables make advanced web analytics possible and, when done right, can offer amazing insights on the behavior of your visitors. The concept behind custom variables is quite easy: when you know with high confidence that a user is part of a certain segment of traffic, you tag that user with a label that suits your interests.

Google Analytics changed the game of web analytics by making it accessible to everyone, but can it get you reports like the conversion rate of all the visitors that were once referred by a friend through a provided form on your website? What about the number of visitors that purchased on your website after downloading one of your whitepapers? No, it can’t, not out of the box. However, using custom variables and some little implementations on your website, the above reports are piece of cake.

What makes custom variables really good? It’s the fact that you can set them up to be persistent across sessions. So if a user downloads a pdf file today and comes and convert on your website next week, Google Analytics will be able to report that he is part of the segment of users who once downloaded a pdf. You will know his behavior across different visiting sessions.

On the web there are 2 main ways a visitor can interact with your website: through links and forms. Think of it as an asymmetric dialogue. Through links you offer information to the user while through forms the user sends information to you. Being asymmetric is what sucks about it, but than again, if there would have been an easier way, I am sure it would of have been implemented.

Most web analytics tools tend to track the outcomes of a visitor actions: the pages that load after users click a link or fill in a form. While for links I believe that is the right way to go, with forms things stay different. No matter how well optimized, there is always going to be an abandonment rate. With forms, things are a little bit more complex. So, how do we track them?

Tracking form errors

Tracking form filling errors is the first thing you wanna do when you want to know more about the performance of your forms. Make sure you have implemented a form validation method though. Check this tutorial on how to do it if you haven’t done it yet.