How to Use Google In Page Analytics to Analyze Website Design and Performance
Google Analytics has powerful tools for analyzing how users interact with and navigate through your website. Our previous blog explained How to Use Google Analytics Visitor Flow graphs to understand how visitors are flowing through your website. In this blog we will explain how to use In Page Analytics to understand how users are interacting with your website, what they are clicking on, what is working, and what is not working. We use both Visitor Flow and In Page Analytics in our SEO Analysis prior to doing a new website design. We also review this data to see how our client websites are performing (along with other metrics we track).
Google In Page Analytics;
example of website with poor click throughs
This is the same website we used in our previous blog as an example of a website with good traffic, but poor visitor flow and poor click throughs. We are in the process of designing a new website for this client and we used both Visitor Flow and In Page Analytics as part of our SEO Analysis to better understand how the current website is performing and what needs to be improved.
Something very important to observe here is that the Top Navigation (colored diamonds) has zero clicks. This is because it is not obvious that it is navigation and also because the titles are not compelling or interesting, bottom line, the eye just passes right over it! This is an excellent example of why “pretty” or “clever” website design is often ineffective from a performance and functionality standpoint.
Google In Page Analytics;
example of website with good click throughs
This is a great example of a website with excellent click throughs as well as good Vistor Flow. You may have noticed that good click throughs = good visitor flow. This is absolutely true, clicks leads to flow and the two are directly related. The Visitor Flow graph show the flow through the website, the In Page Analytics shows how they are getting there and what they are clicking on. To fully understand what is going on with a website you need to review both.
What we like about this website is that not only are visitors clicking and going into the interior pages, BUT they are clicking on what the client wants to them see, THE BOATS! This is a result of both good website design AND good SEO. The SEO is targeting the right keywords and delivering the right traffic and once the visitors are there the website is enticing them to look further. This is exactly how it is supposed to work!
Google In Page Analytics;
another example of good click throughs
We choose this website as an example for two reasons, firstly it is getting very good click throughs to the pages where the client wants visitors to go to (again a result of good SEO plus good website design); but secondly for a more subtle reason. This is a very simple and clean website design. It is very straight forward, not “sexy” from a website design standpoint, and it is performing very well, in fact, it is performing better than most sexy website designs.
This is a great example of how simplicity is often a better design than an overly busy and complicated one. The visitors to this website are professional clothing buyers, they are busy, too busy for a bunch of gimmicky Flash animation, video, or a complicated website that is hard to navigate. They are looking for clothes, and want the information quickly.
Google Analytics In Page Analytics Menu
To see In Page Analytics for your website you must have Google Analytics installed on your website and a login, usually a gmail account to access it. If you do not have Google Analytics installed or do not have access to it ask your webmaster to set it up for you. This is very easy for a webmaster to do and should be running on every website. Our team can set this up for on your website or do a complete SEO Analysis of your websites performance and ranking. Click on Jump to contact us about this or any other questions you have about our services and of course we welcome blog comments and are happy to answer questions here as well.
Below is the Google Analytics menu where you will find In Page Analytics, from Home or the Dashboard click on Standard Reporting to see this menu:
