So this is why the cobbler’s children go barefoot…it’s impossible to find the time in the day to do for yourself what you do for everyone else. I’m reminded of when Seinfeld discovered he couldn’t get his massage therapist girlfriend to give him a massage after hours.
Here I am after everyone’s left, trying to cobble, um, scribble some notes down on how to begin the process of developing an effective Web site. Something we’ve done over 250 times for clients, but only a few times for ourselves in the 9+ years since I started.
One of the benefits of having a current Web site is being able to review your traffic reports. You can immediately see where the traffic is flowing, giving you a better idea of what can be cut, and what needs to be saved.
Last time we updated our site I had the brilliant idea of an "About You" button. I mean, you always see "About Us", but since visitors are primarily self-interested, why not create a whole directory about them?
Maybe I was ahead of my time, but that section got very little traffic.
The most popular page on our Web site is not our home page, but rather our company logos page. Turns out we rank really well for a variety of "company logos" searches. In fact, it’s our number one traffic driver. Unfortunately, we do very few of them.
Ryan does a great job on logos, IMHO, but they’re time consuming and they often create a bottleneck in our production calendar. I’ve contemplated putting Google Ads there, so at least we’d generate some income from that page. However, I’m not a fan of ads on our Web site, even on a page that rarely (never?) brings in any business.
After that for popularity comes our home page, then the examples page in our portfolio. Unfortunately I haven’t updated that page in well over a year, because I update Web Site Launches on our blog instead.
Ouch. (Make note to simplify and update the examples page as often as we launch new sites.)
Then we have our staff page, which is popular because I link to it from every blog post in my signature file. Probably not much I have to do here, except it’s probably time to update the bios. (But not the photos!)
As I go down the list I see pages from our email newsletter archives and a few "articles" pages: these are old, often out-of-date articles that were first published in our print newsletter. (Yes, we used to send out dead trees.) There’s a few more pages from our portfolio section but no big surprises.
This was an important exercise, and something that I recommend for all Web site owners. There’s more that you can glean from traffic reports than just page popularity, of course, but that’s what you need for this exercise.
Take some time this week (5 – 10 minutes should be plenty) and review your own traffic reports.
Rich Brooks
Traffic Cop
Tags: Traffic Reports | Web Site Statistics | Web Site Redesign
