A guest blog from Internet Marketing Expert, Jeremy Nelson-Smith
Knowing which links on your website are being clicked on, and just as importantly which are not, can help you enormously in deciding how best to optimise your web pages for maximum conversion effectiveness. As we all know getting people to your website is one thing, getting them to do what you want them to do when they get there is quite another!
So just how can you see which are the most and least well used links on your website?
Using In-Page Analytics in your Google Analytics account is one free way; it’s not the most sophisticated nor accurate tool available but for the small business owner it’s a quick and easy way of assessing how your web pages are performing when it comes to people moving from one part of your site to another.
Here’s how to access In-Page Analytics (if you’re familiar with accessing your Google Analytics reports then skip steps 1-4):
1. Log in to your Google Account
2. From your account settings choose Analytics
3. Click on your account name
4. In the Website Profiles list click on View Report
5. From the top left hand menu (headed by Dashboard) click on Content
6. From the sub-menu select In-Page Analytics
As if by magic you’ll see your website appear (probably the Home page) in the panel to the right. The Content Detail for that page (page views, bounce rate, etc) will appear to the left.
In the right hand panel you can see the percentage of clicks for each link.
The orange bar at the bottom shows you the percentage of clicks below what you are looking at, great for checking if links ‘below the fold’ (i.e. not visible to most people using standard monitor or laptop screens without scrolling) are being missed (Top Tip: never put your most important ‘hero’ content or messages below the fold where people can miss it).
You can use the scroll bar to the right to move up and down the page.
You can navigate from one page to another within the In-Page Analytics window and each time you move to another page the corresponding data will appear. Clever stuff isn’t it?
To get out of In-Page Analytics and back to the main report data click on Back to Content Overview in the top left of the page, under the Google Analytics window.
I strongly recommend that you give Google In-Page Analytics a try. All the clients I’ve shown it to have been fascinated by the data and some key decisions about how to improve content layout and navigation have been made because of it.
Just remember to take the data as a snapshot of what’s happening click-wise on your web pages. It’s a valuable snapshot but not doesn’t provide the level of data that you’ll get with paid-for tools like Clicktale or CrazyEgg.
I’d love to hear if you have you used In-Page Analytics yet and what decisions has it helped you make about your website content and experience?
Photo credit: Salvatore Vuono