Using Site Optimization on Your Website or Blog

Well, that sounds a little too omniscient for a company. But when it comes to the web, Google pretty much knows everything that happens.

If you administrate a website you must install Google Analytics onto your website or blog. Well, you need to do that if you care about getting to know who your readers are, where they come from, and what they like.

It’s called Site Optimization. (Different than Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it’s known.) When you optimize your site you start creating content that your readers like more. You also design the site to fit what your users can handle with the navigation.

An example of optimization:

We work to optimize the YMX  Newsletter all the time.  With MailChimp, we get detailed reports when we send out our weekly newsletter. This reports doesn’t tell us who opened it and what they clicked on but it does tell us how many people opened our newsletter what they clicked on when they read it.

So, to optimize we experiment with different wording of the subject line and order of what we put in there. Studies show that if you write a compelling subject line on something like that, people are more likely to read it. So we experiment with certain words that lead to a higher open rate. We try sending it at different times of the day to gauge the open rate. And based on what people actually click on under our  “5 Spot” determines the types of links we figure our recipients think is useful.

Through optimization we’ve learned the recipients of the YMX weekly newsletter like something they can download right away. So we mention it in the subject line and  then mention it in the #1 position. And they also like to look at blogs (not YMX ones necessarily) that  offer a hot deal or a quick tip to something.

Based on that optimization report, we’re able to increase the open rate and also grow the newsletters subscriptions. (It’s free but we still get excited about it growing!)

Using Site Optimization for the site you run

Even if you are blogging you need to be aware of some basic rules of optimization if you want to gain an audience. It’s not that you write for your audience, it’s that you stay aware of what the audience will read. (Like, on my blog if I write about family stuff… I need to be aware that no one really cares about that too much.) So, here are a few quick tips on site optimization. There are certainly other and better resources out there! But here are some getting started points.

3 Ways to Get Started on Optimization

1. Install Google Analytics to your sites template. It’s free and it takes about 5 minutes to set up.
2. Wait 15-30 days. This is important because the more data you draw from the more accurate your conclusions are going to be.
3. After some time has passed, take a look at a few sets of very important data. (I know, you are Christians and the #1 thing seems to be the total number of visitors… but it’s not that important to site optimization!) Look at the bounce rate. It’s it’s low, under say 50%, you are doing OK. The bounce rate means the percentage of users who looked at more than one thing on your site. Look at the content overview. Notice what people are clicking on from your site. The “/” will be the #1 spot as that is your home (landing) page. But what is #2? This may surprise you. And a quick change you can do is moving some of those navigation links around. Let’s say you have a church website and you want every first time visitor to look at “About us” but every first time visitor is looking at “Staff” instead. You may need to re-prioritize your navigation to show off your “about us” button. Or… you may want to clean up that staff page! Lastly, set a goal for your analytics. This is pretty easy to set up and the point of it is that you want to track what you main goal of your site is. For YMX, our two main goals are “registration” and “newsletter.” For your blog it is likely the “feed” button.

Last thing about Analytics that is super cool. The search engine report. Google will report to you exactly what keywords led to someone coming to your site or blog. This will also tell you a little about what people are looking for when they come to your site. This is amazing when you run a big site like YMX. There are thousands of search terms that lead to us and some of them are funny and some of them are… odd. But with Analytics I can see every single search term that leads to us.

For instance, let’s say the keywords that most often bring people to your church website are “food pantry Romeo.” What do you think you should highlight front and center on your main landing page? You probably don’t want to feature a picture of your church building, do you?