This post will cover the fundamentals of what you should be looking at. These metrics measure the core performance of your website. They provide an overall view of how your website is doing and give you insight about the kind of traffic that your website is generating.

Visits vs Unique Visitors

These are two metrics that are often misunderstood. Visits are the number of sessions created within a date range. Each visit by a user generates a new session. This session has a time limit and a user can leave a website and come back to it within that time limit and still be counted as one visit. If they come back to the website outside of that time limit, they will generate a new session which will be counted as a second visit. You will notice that your Visits are always higher than your Unique Visitors. Both metrics have equal value of importance, however, they shouldn’t be mixed up with one another. Unique Visitors are individual users who visited your website. These users will not be counted more than once as a unique visitor. For example, Joe visits www.xyz.website.com, the website counts him as a unique visitor and one visit. Days later, Joe returns to the same website, the website will not count him as a unique visitor again but he will be counted as another visit.

The number of visits to your website is a good overall indicator of how much traffic your website is receiving. Compare your visits from previous months and use it as a gauge. If your current month’s visits are lower than the previous months, it is likely that you are not generating enough content. Users will come back to your website if you constantly publish new, relevant and fresh content. If you are experiencing an upwards trend of visitors per month, you are doing something right. However, this doesn’t indicate that your website is working and that it’s generating leads. This is explained as below…

Bounce Rate

It’s nice to see that your website is receiving lots of traffic as it should. But are your visitors staying to browse? When you go to a clothing store, you would browse around until you find what you like. The same logic applies online. When a visitor lands on a specific page of your website, they will either decide that they’ve found the information they needed or that they haven’t. If they like the information you’ve presented to them they are more likely to browse around your website and take action (i.e. make a purchase or contact you). If they don’t like the page that they have landed on, they are likely to leave immediately. This is what’s called a bounce. It is when a user lands on a website and leaves immediately without making any other activity. Great web designs are likely to have low bounce rates compared to budget websites. Make sure you are investing into your website and hire Brisbane website designers who has extensive experience.

A low bounce rate is what you are aiming for. A website with a high bounce rate could mean that it is lacking in a few things. Websites need to have relevant content for its targeted audience. A plumbing website with content about electricians will confuse its readers which will make them leave. To encourage your visitors to stay and browse, your website should be engaging and interactive, ensure that your website is easy to navigate, use call to action elements such as buttons and obvious signs or banners. You can gauge your website’s relevancy to your visitors by looking at the Average Visit Duration.

Average Visit Duration

Let’s look at the art gallery business. When a visitor arrives at a gallery, they expect to find an interesting art piece. If they like what they see, they’ll stay longer to observe this particular piece they are attracted to. On the other hand, if they don’t find it interesting, they’ll go to the next installment. When a user lands on a website, they are usually looking for something in particular. If they don’t find the information they are looking for within a short period of time, they will leave and look else where. When they find what they are looking for, they will read the content presented to them and continue to browse the website. To allow this, your website should be easy to read, the most important content should stand out from the rest of the page. At the end of your content, make sure you offer other information that they may be looking for. This will increase your website’s Average Visit Duration. If your website is currently experiencing a low average visit duration, this could mean that the information you are presenting to your visitors are not relevant enough or that your website is too hard to navigate. Website usability is a very important aspect in web development. It is highly correlated with a website’s conversion rate. A good web designer will know how to optimise a website to increase average visit durations.

New Visits vs Returning Visitors

These metrics compare the percentages of new visitors and returning visitors. Receiving a high rate of new visitors to your website doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good thing. If these visitors are not returning to your website, your online strategy should be revised. To achieve a high rate of returning visitors, make sure that your website is well designed and optimised, that your content is highly relevant, and that you are generating fresh new content regularly. Develop an online strategy which includes the implementation of tools on your website such as newsletter subscriptions, RSS feeds, and blogs. The key is to keep your visitors coming back to the website to entice them to enquire about your products or services.

These are metrics that you should be paying attention to at the core level. In this educational series, we will cover other metrics that you should be looking at. To keep up with the latest posts, make sure you subscribe or follow us on Facebook!

Magik New Media is a Brisbane Web Designer specialising in the creation of websites that work. Talk to us to see how we can help you generate more leads through your website.

With Groupon and Scoopon dominating the market, we are keen to see how this will affect the group buying coupon industry. Groupon charges a premium through their hefty commission rates. Facebook Offers plans to make this available for all Facebook Page owners without any fees and charges.

Offers will be distributed through the News Feeds. Additionally, it can be promoted through Facebook Ads to gain more users. Users will see a post feed with a “Get Offer” link which they can click on. More explanations of the feature can be found on facebook.com/help/offers.

Not everyone will be able to take advantage of this new feature. As always, it will rolled out slowly across the globe. Here’s hoping Australian pages will get it soon!

Need online strategy ideas? Talk to Magik! We are Brisbane Web Designers with over 10 years of experience. We’ll help you reach your targets.

Through all the years of working as a web designer, I found that many businesses still don’t understand the importance of website statistics. Worst yet, many businesses still don’t have a measuring tool implemented within their website. For many businesses, their website is often the first point of contact. Ultimately, the purpose of a website is to generate leads or sell online. When unmeasured, it’s the same as driving blind. You’ll get to somewhere but you won’t know how, when and where.

Google Analytics Dashboard where you can measure your website performance

So how do you measure a website?

There are lots of tools on the web that can measure the performance of your website. Our favourite is a free but sophisticated tool called Google Analytics. Amongst many things, Analytics measures the incoming traffic of a website. It enables you to see where the traffic is coming from, the demographics of your visitors, what search terms people use to get to your website, and how you are or aren’t achieving your leads through conversion tracking. To install Analytics on your website, you will need some technical knowledge. Alternatively, you can hire SEO experts and website designers like Magik New Media who are based in Brisbane that can help you with all your website needs.

Metrics can be confusing. You will benefit from learning how these metrics can effect your website.

Metrics

While monitoring your website, you are going to come across with terms that you haven’t heard before. In Google Analytics, you will notice that your data has been processed and labeled. These labels are called metrics. It’s important to know what these are to be able to understand how your website is actually doing. For example, Unique Visitors are totally different to Visits. Unique Visitors are users visiting your website for the first time while Visits are the total number of visitors you received without discrimination. In future posts, we will be going through in detail of what these metrics are and what they mean to your business.

Within this Website Strategies series, we will be giving tips and strategy ideas on how you can optimise your website to achieve your goals.

Subscribe today and follow us on Facebook and Twitter, we’ll let you know when we have new information!

The Magik New Media team consists of dedicated Brisbane website designers assisting local and international clients by maximizing their online presence. Contact us today for a no obligation consultation.

Magik New Media is proud to announce the start of our new educational series on running a successful online campaign. With almost no barrier of entry, businesses are able to establish an online presence without having to spend a lot of resources. However, simply being online is no longer enough. It won’t help your business reach your target market. With hundreds and millions of websites available on the Internet, how can a business break out from the tangled mess of a web?

Confused about Analytics? We'll explain it all within the Magik Education series.

The answers can be found within Magik Education.

We will cover all topics related to running a successful website. Categories include optimising your website design, getting found on Google and other search engines, online marketing strategies, web hosting tips and tricks, and Mobile Apps development.

Our education can be applied to all types of businesses. Whether you are a sole trader, a small business, a large corporation, you will find relevant and helpful information on how you can increase your website performance through solid online strategies.

Subscribe today and follow us on Facebook and Twitter, we’ll let you know when we have new information!

1. Accessibility – What is meant by this is users and search engines both need to be able to reach all of the pages, all the content that you’ve created on your website in easy ways, and you need to make sure you don’t have any dumb mistakes that can harm your SEO

2. Keyword targeting – You have to choose the right keywords to target. Work on keywords that are related to your offering but also have proven search and enquiry volume

3. Content quality and value – When users arrive to your site, they need to engage in relevant content and information that gives them what they are looking for… No point getting them there so have them leave because you don’t deliver what they are searching for in the first place.

4. Design quality, user experience, and usability – This goes hand in hand with point 3 ‘Content, quality and value’ SEO and your website are sides of the coin. You can’t have one without the other. Don’t skimp on your website design, do it professionally and strategically… Work with your designer to structure your website visitors experience.

5. Social account setup – Because social and SEO are coming together like never before, Google is showing plus ones and things that people share by default in the search engine rankings. Bing is showing all the stuff that has been shared on Facebook, and they are putting it above the rest of the content. It really, really pays to be in social, and social signals help search engines better rank things as well as having a nice second order effect on user and usage data, on branding, on the impact of people seeing those sites through social sharing and potentially linking to them. GET SOCIAL!

6. Link building – Link building plays a big role but needs to be done properly… Don’t just link in and leave it at that. It is mis conception that this is what the magical element is in SEO but it is so much more… Get quality links, link exchange with your contacts, blog and comments on blog articles ‘ethical and value offered comments that is’ and do it where its relevant. Get into directories, industry specific and relevant. Do some PR. We have a client in Sydney that get write ups all the time for their work and they do nothing to aid there SEO and as a result of the PR write ups they are number ’1′ in google for ‘architects sydney’. It is a powerful thing…

There is do much to this process and it needs to be clearly understood and not toyed with lightly… do your research, understand the mechanics or just talk to someone who knows what they are doing …. Hint, Hint!

Lata and love from Magik…

Unlike all the other social media platforms e.g. the ones listed above, Google never offered personalised URL’s and instead have you a long code (imagine a barcode.) Now, not to sound picky, but telling your friends to go find your profile at 115470752904200114 is a little confusing to all of us accustomed with own our special names as URL’s. Rest assured though, as Gplus.to come’s in, eradicating this problem! It’s a simple little app that lets you create a brief URL to share with your mates. Problem fixed!

There are a few more perks up Google’s sleeve though. Some other pretty neat features of Google+ are ‘circles.’ How many of us have wrote something like: “Work is so boring, why can’t it be Friday?!” only for your boss, who you’ve got as a friend on Facebook, sends you an email to get to work? Awkward! Don’t worry though, with circles you can dump your friends into categories to avoid any more cringe worthy moments like that.

Another nifty detail is ‘hangouts’ where you can, like, hangout with your friends. It’s all via webcams, but it takes the when/where/what out of organising a catch up!

My personal favourite is (drum roll) ‘Instant Upload.’ Admittedly in the exclusive group of annoying people who load every photo they take to Facebook, you can set up a (private) album that immediately uploads the photos you take straight to it. From there you can decide who sees what.

Worthy of a mention is sparks; the ultimate boredom killer – type in a topic and swoon over the results. You can also swoon over ‘Huddle’, which, essentially, is a conversation (six people only, guys) between selected friends, kind of like MSN chat! The conversation is accessible via phone, also, which means you no longer send the same text to countless others!

You know you’re curious…check it out here;

https://plus.google.com/up/start/?sw=1&type=st

Start the financial year GST Free!

Got a new financial year resolution? Great! If not, rest assured, we’ve got the perfect one for you.

This financial year, don’t miss out on the endless benefits of maximizing your online presence! Bring in business and represent yourself with a creative and innovative website. It’s the best way to start the new financial year. Not convinced? What if we take the GST component off the cost? That’s right! We’ll pay for it!

An online presence for your business is the not only the most cost-effective communication medium but is also active marketing. If you’re not already online, or your website isn’t up to par with your standards or communicate your products and services effectively, wwwhat are you thinking?

A website needs to communicate how great your business and services are while engaging your visitors to take action and make contact. It’s the perfect way to advertise your products and services, talk about your team and promote yourself to your target market.

If this resolution sounds perfect for your business, then you need a little Magik.

Let us develop your new website this financial year and we’ll cover the GST of your website project, just something from us to celebrate your start to the financial new year.

Contact us now! Call 1300 353 700 or drop by www.magiknewmedia.com.au to check you what we can do for you.

Magik has brought Chris to Magik for his exceptional talent: helping clients develop their business online. With a university education in multimedia and communications marketing, over a decade of experience in online media and a thriving off-hours career as the front man of a slammin’ band, Chris is truly a rock star in every sense of the word. Prior to joining Magik New Media, Chris worked in advertising production and sales for television and press organisations. Thinking outside of the square and fleshing out marketing strategies that have positive outcomes for business is what gets Chris excited!

He is keen to work with businesses that are ready to rock by exploiting the massive opportunity the World Wide Web offers.

This application shows you how to teach children of all ages to swim. Anyone can learn how to do great lessons by watching our professional, step by step videos, and using easy-to-follow lesson plans. Conduct interactive lessons at the pool!

uSwim has 3 separate levels:

• l. Babies: – Children from 4 months to 3 years
• 2. Safety Fundamentals: – Children over 3 years,
• 3. Stroke Development: – Children over 3 years who have completed level 2. Credentials

The uSwim program is adapted from Australia’s premier Swim School – Aquatic Achievers, who deliver over 300,000 lessons per year and have been at the forefront of children’s aquatic education for the past 40 years.