Last time we learned about the most basic information generated by website statistics systems, and the importance of ‘stickiness’ in terms of your website’s usability.
Another important indicator for usability is the click path. This describes the route that people take clicking links on your site, recording order of visits to various pages. Investigating this can help you to understand what pages are the most popular, and how many pages people view, so that you can optimise your site accordingly.
For example, some pages within your website may be positioned better across different search engines, so they will be popular entry points. Studying the click path of those pages, you can see those that generate the greatest interest in your visitor and make them click deeper into your website.
You can use this knowledge to compare pages, and recognise elements that keep visitors on your website – from well-placed links and banners to the valuable text content of your pages.
One more interesting statistic comes from referrer links – data on how visitors get to your website. The ‘referrer’ is whatever website your visitor was on prior to clicking through to yours. Checking your referral logs will show you which search engines are sending you the most traffic, and which of your links on other sites are performing well.
Cross-reference the referral logs with the click path statistics and you will be able to identify those referrers that send you the visitors most interested with your website’s content.
This valuable data can help you to improve your overall promotion strategy, and may save you time and money you may otherwise spend promoting your website in the wrong places..
Marcin Kulik is the owner of MK Design Studio, a creative web design agency based in Malahide Co Dublin.
E-mail: m.kulik@mkdesign.ie Web: www.mkdesign.ie
