Hey everybody, ! I wanted to share some data so that way you can compare! What you’re looking at is Walls by Design’s Google Analytics data from April 1 – July 2 compared between 2019 and 2018. We were just using this data to see how effective the website rebuild was that we did at the start of the year. If you have an Analytics account set up, you can easily find this info. Under the Acquisition reports, click All Traffic, and select Channels.
What’s important to note is that I’m using a customized data view. Instead of looking at All Traffic, I created “Colorado New Traffic” which is used to only see users in our service area, that are first timers visiting the site. Our goal is defined as anybody who visits our contact page. This best represents all the users who call, schedule online, or submit a form.
Overall
Users
-8.21%
Bounce Rate
-12.94%
Pages / Session
+2.26%
Avg. Session Duration
+4.02%
Goal Completion Rate
+76.33%
Overall Goal Completions
+61.85%
The data shows a decrease of 8% users but overall they are staying on the site and interacting more. What is awesome to see is the huge boost in the Goal Conversion Rate and Goal Completions. So, we can assume that our new site is performing well enough to justify the user experience redesign.
But wait, is that really the case if you look at each acquisition channel?
Organic
Users
-23.12%
Bounce Rate
-26.66%
Pages / Session
+10.60%
Avg. Session Duration
+34.93%
Goal Completion Rate
+111.96%
Overall Goal Completions
+62.96%
Let’s start from the top with Organic Search, you can see there’s been a much larger decrease in users compared to the overall average. This makes sense because we removed all irrelevant blog content from our site like wallpaper removal, faux painting, etc.
The increase in interaction* and leads from the new site suggests a possibility of things when it comes to organic. It can either mean the content we have on our site is ranking higher. It can be that more users are searching our company name (walls by design) instead of a keyword relevant to our business, due to our increased branding efforts over the past year. Or it can be all the same type of traffic as the year before, but the new site converts leads better.
Without Google Search Console set up, it’s very difficult to tell where your organic traffic is coming from so it’s important to link it to Google analytics. That’s a topic for a different blog post but what I can tell you is that our increase in performance is a combination of ranking higher, more searches for our business, and a better user experience.
Direct/Social
Direct Users
+16.85
Bounce Rate
-12.94%
Pages / Session
+2.26%
Avg. Session Duration
+4.02%
Direct Goal Completion Rate
+58.93%
Overall Goal Completions
+85.71%
The data of these two acquisition channels are very similar to one another. What is important to note, is the only difference made over the year was the website change. Although we are seeing lower interaction rate like in Paid Search, there are huge increases in the goal conversion rate. This supports the theory that our new user experience allows them to spend less time on the site to get what they need before they feel comfortable contacting us.
Display
Users
-78.78%
Bounce Rate
-4.26%
Pages / Session
+17.07%
Avg. Session Duration
-29.49%
Goal Completion Rate
+214.12%
Overall Goal Completions
-33.33%
Like Paid Search, this channel is mainly affected by the campaign settings made in AdWords. Instead of targeting everyone who visited our site, we switched to only targeting our ideal target customer. The increase in the conversion rate is due to this. Our website might have another contributing factor, but overall this is why.
Conclusion
We can tell from examining all the data that our website redesign has been a success in improving the user experience for all acquisition channels. However, it’s important to analyze each channel individually to really get a better picture at the numbers.
