I always find it hard to interpret site performance form Analytics. It is just fine as long as it is about tracking visitor's sources or calculating the site's bounce rate. but what about the time spent on site? What does your instinct tell you when the time spent on site is more? Does that mean that the user found your site interesting and spent a longer time there? Well sometimes even our instincts go wrong; the reason being that we fail to take into account all factors which can possibly manipulate the stickiness factor.
So, do you think that a visitor spends more time on you site just because they like it? I bet your assumption could go wrong.. lets check why
Firstly, if your site is well decorated with an impressive video in the front page; its quite obvious that the visitor would like to check it out. Watching a video automatically demands a bit longer time and this doesn't have much to do with the rest of the content.
Now imagine another situation. You are on the verge of buying something from an e commerce website and just then your fiance calls you up? What would you possibly do? Pick up the phone and engage in a long discussion and forget all about the site. The server would record this as time the visitor spends on site though you practically are aloof from it.
The human beings have this propensity to deduce one way interpretation. When the stickiness is lo, we assume that the content was not appreciated. But what if the visitor just found what he was looking for and made an instant purchase? On the contrary, increased stickiness could also mean that the content was not upto the requirement and the visitor spent hours searching for his product and ultimately got frustrated with the site! That means that the particular visitor would never return!
Do these sound scary? Well, its nothing but fact. What them is the right parameter to measure the performance? The bounce rate which is diagonally opposite of stickiness is pretty lame. So there's just this one thing which counts to measure a site's performance, its increased, consistent and ever growing sales.
So, do you think that a visitor spends more time on you site just because they like it? I bet your assumption could go wrong.. lets check why
Firstly, if your site is well decorated with an impressive video in the front page; its quite obvious that the visitor would like to check it out. Watching a video automatically demands a bit longer time and this doesn't have much to do with the rest of the content.
Now imagine another situation. You are on the verge of buying something from an e commerce website and just then your fiance calls you up? What would you possibly do? Pick up the phone and engage in a long discussion and forget all about the site. The server would record this as time the visitor spends on site though you practically are aloof from it.
The human beings have this propensity to deduce one way interpretation. When the stickiness is lo, we assume that the content was not appreciated. But what if the visitor just found what he was looking for and made an instant purchase? On the contrary, increased stickiness could also mean that the content was not upto the requirement and the visitor spent hours searching for his product and ultimately got frustrated with the site! That means that the particular visitor would never return!
Do these sound scary? Well, its nothing but fact. What them is the right parameter to measure the performance? The bounce rate which is diagonally opposite of stickiness is pretty lame. So there's just this one thing which counts to measure a site's performance, its increased, consistent and ever growing sales.
1 comments:
I must appreciate your analysis. Even I consider the time spent on the website while calculating the stickiness. Thanks for sharing ur thoughts....i'll keep this in mind the next time.
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