Compare page performance to your site average

When trying to make sence of the statistics for your site most of the time you are looking at the statistics of individual pages and checking their performance over a specific time period. But sometimes a lot can be learned from comparing it to your site's average.

Let´s say you are looking at the "Content by Title" overview in Google Analytics. You see information regarding "pageviews", "time on site" and "bounce rate" for each page. This is usefull information but you would like to compare these pages to eachother in order to find out if some stand out in either a negative or positive way. And you would like to know how these pages perform against your site´s average.

Click on . This graph shows you the selected metric of each of the pages compared to your site´s average. This gives you a good idea if there are any anomalies you should pay attention to.

The graph contains two dropdown lists you can use to select diferent metrics. In the first dropdown you can select a metric to sort your results by. The second dropdown lets you select the metric you want to compare.

This image shows an overview of bouncerates sorted by pageviews. You can clearly see there are two pages that have a relative high bouncerate compared to the site's average and these may need attention.

Interesting statistics to look at in this manner are for example:

• Time on page: Which of your pages are beeing visited longer and which shorter?
• Bounce rate: Which differences can you spot compared to site average?

How can I see if my CPC is too high in Google AdWords?

If you are running an Adwords campaign you know you are constantly managing your keyword's maximum CPC in order to keep your ad running in the top positions. But how can you decide what is the best value for Max. CPC?

When starting a new ad you decide the maximum price you are willing to pay for clicks for each of the used keywords. The price has to be above a minimum price which depends on the amount of other advertisers using the same keyword. If your bid is below this minimum you will be notified of this so you can increase your price.

Once your ad is running and you start getting clicks you can see how well your ad is doing and on which position your ad is showing. If your ad is performing well and has a high clickthrough rate your ad will be shown on a higher position. If your clickthrough rate is lower then the ads of your competitors your ad will be shown on a lower position. To get your ad to show higher than your competitors ad you can try to increase the clickthrough rate or bid a higher price.

You can raise and lower your CPC's by trial and error but there is a way to check what the expected CPC for a keyword is. You can do this as follows:

• Click on "Tools" and then "Keyword tool"
• Perform a search for the keyword you want to check

You now see a list of keywords related to the one you searched for. To see the CPC prices fill in a value for Max. CPC and click "Recalculate"

Now you will see estimated CPC and Ad position.


You can use this information to see if the CPC you are paying is in range of these prices. If your price is a lot higher you could try and lower your price. Experiment with diferent maximum prices and check the amount of expected clicks. If the clicks stay high enough you can try and lower your max. CPC.

My site has a high bounce rate, what do I do?

Bounce rate is an important statistic to keep an eye on as it can tell you a lot about your pages and visitors. The bounce rate shows the percentage of users that leave your site after watching only one page. You might say they just bounced of your site as they didn't get past the first page.
The most prominent reasons for having a high bounce rate are:

• you are attracting the wrong visitors or
• there is a problem with your site

What you can do to lower the bounce rate

Try and identify pages in your site that have the highest bounce rate and do the following:

• Check if there are any errors on the page
• Check if there are internal links(links to other pages of your site) on the page
• Check if the internal links on the page are sufficiently clear and attractive

Besides checking your site you can also check to see if you can find more information about the visitors that bounced of.

• Through which external link did visitors come to this page
• Check which keywords were used to find this page and see if the page is relevant to those keywods
• If visitors came from your Adwords or other advertising campaign check if the page is sufficiently relevant to the keywords and text of the campaign.

The above video is a very interesting explanation of what bounce rate is and how you can use it to find problems on your site.

Conversions? What does this mean for my site?

You may have heard the term "Conversions" or "Conversion rate" being mentioned in regards to a website's performance. What do these terms mean and how can you use them to improve your website?

If you already have a website or are thinking about creating a new website you know that your site has a specific goal or a set of goals. If you have a site just because you want to have a website this article is not for you. A goal could be to sell products but it could also be to generate interest in your services and have potential customers contact you. You create your site in such a manner that it will help achieve this goal. You present your products in such a manner that it will lead to a sale, or so you think.

It is very important to measure your websites traffic but even more important to be able to analyze the data in such a manner that it tells you if your site needs improving or not. This is where "Conversions" come into play. The term "Conversion rate" is described as: "The percentage of unique visitors who take a desired action upon visiting the website"(Wikipedia). So this means the amount of visitors that came to your site and completed one of your website's goals. So a conversion occurs when a visitor to your site "converts" himself from a regular visitor to one that fullfills one of your goals. For example a visitor orders a product. At the moment he orders a product he creates a conversion.

By keeping track of your conversions you will be able to find out which percentage of visitors converts and therefor which percentage of visitors is of value to you and generates revenue. You can use this information to set up an online advertising campaign or use it to further finetune your website in order to increase your website's conversionrate.