Q&A - Question and Answer Guides

Google and Bing Web analytics measure, analyse and report on user interaction with a websites and metrics, primarily to help the site owner optimize user 'engagement' with the website, page or article. It is primarily about the commercial aspects of a site:

• users who stay longer,
• have return visits
• or who visit other pages on the site

are more likely to be 'happy' with the site and will be more likely to buy what is being sold, click on the ads and respond in other ways through the 'actions' built into the site.

These metrics measure traffic and popularity, but also provide a market research tool to assess and improve the effectiveness of a web site.

Lets look at some of the metrics provided by Google and Bing analytics and how they relate to user engagement.

Unique Visits / Percent of New Visits: Shows how many people visit your page for the first time. Low numbers of repeat visits may be a sign that few of your users come back for more. However this depends on your topic and objectives. A good site may satiate users with a single visit.

Percent Returning Visitors: If the site is designed as a reference site, that people will keep coming back to, then this may be a sign that the site is working. Some sites are nor designed for repeat visits.

Bounce Rate: This is one of the key metrics for multi-page sites. If the user opens your page, and then goes to one of your other pages, their visit is prolonged. If a user enters, stays reading the page, and then exists, this is called a bounce. So if 100 people enter a website on the landing page and 40 of them go through to another page and the same site, the bounce rate is 60%. Bounce rates vary greatly depending on the content of the page, for example: blog posts generally have a very high bounce rates as the topic is covered on a single long page. Similarly if you do not provide links to your related pages the user has no way of staying for a while on your site. Product pages for online stores tends to have a low bounce rates because users will skim through the list of products, choose an external link and be gone. The average bounce rate is usually about 50% for a multi-page site with good links. The bounce rate values should be considered simultaneously with the average time on the page. If the time spend is high this may offset the negative aspects of a high bounce rate. Similarly low time on the page may be countered by a low bounce rate as users have been navigating to other pages to get the detailed information they are after.

Frequency of Visits: This obviously depends on the time frame. A person who has visited the site 5 times in the last fortnight is more engaged that someone who has visited the site 20 times over the last 12 months.

Recency of Visit: This metric assesses the recency of our customers' last engagement. It is usually measured as Days Since Last Visit. The interpretation of this metric depends on the design and purpose of the page. If you expect visitors to return and don’t – this is a sign that the site is not meeting their requirements. There are seasonal aspects and some sites that provide information may not be expected to have repeat visits.

Pages per Visit / Depth of Visit: show how many pages your user visits, but the kind of engagement is unknown as a frustrated user may plough through many pages trying to get what they are after.

Average Visit Duration / Time Spent on Site: Time spent on the site correlates with the extent of engagement, but does not discriminate between the quality of the engagement. You user may simply be frustrated trying to get what they are really after.

Other Types of Engagement Requiring an Active Response from the User

These are perhaps the most useful metrics because the user must take an action to confirm their engagement. Some examples of this are:

• Brand Recognition
• Printing or downloading a piece of content
• User submissions or contributions
• Rating or bookmarking the content
• Feedback (comments, likes, complaints, enquiries, etc)
• Registering
• Polls
• Subscribing (feed, email, newsletter)
• Degree of Engagement

Conclusion - User Engagement is very Hard to Measure

Derivation of the kind or engagement (positive or negative) is not possible using web analytics alone. All that can be measured is the degree of engagement and the type has to be inferred from the responses the user makes on the site by opening other pages or by completing questionnaires or adding comments.

Tips for Boosting Engagement and Getting the WOW Response

There are a number of general things you can do to get the user more engaged with your article or website:

Make Use of Power and 'Muscle' Words and Calls to Action

Engage your audience by referring them as "you" and "your" and use active voice rather than passive. 

Instead of: "In order to become a successful artist, one must practice as much as possible in your free time."
Power Word Text: "Do you aim to become a good and respected artist? Practice when you have some free time to help you meet your goals!"

Use 'calls to action' and muscle words throughout your article to guide visitors to links and keep them interested. Embed text links in your text as sign posts to make your site dynamic.

See examples of 'call to action' words in the table below.

Action Words that Help Engage Your Reader

Appeal to The Reader's Emotions

Desire, hope, wanting to succeed, fear of failure and flattery are great examples of common appeals to the reader's emotional appeals. Wanting to succeed is a great example to keep in mind when writing. Readers are searching for information and you need to know what they are looking for and how they want it presented.

Make Good Use of Repetition to Emphasise the Key Points

Repetition is often the key to successful engagement, especially when you are telling them what they want to hear. Use it as reinforcement and do it wisely to stop the users being bored.

Answer Both the Obvious, the Potential Questions and Give the Reader some Unexpected Surprises (WOWs)

This includes questions and answers, "What ifs" and the full gambit of potential queries you believe your reader wants to know. This will garner trust and showcase your credibility and an authority on the topic.

Keep the Article Concise, Well-structured with Sections and Headings

Many readers will skim through your article to find the bits they are really interested in. Long unstructured paragraphs become overpowering and many readers won't be bothered to wade through them. Be concise, succinct, but thorough and comprehensive at the same time.

Content Really Is the 'King'

If you want to fully engage your readers, then write good, well-researched, well-written content that meets your reader's needs and is presented in a well-structured layout.

Get your Readers Responding to the Content

Design you article so that it has built in ways that the reader can respond to the content via comments and polls. Always answer the comments to get a flow of ideas started - that others will follow.

Tricks to Grabbing Your Reader’s Attention

• Begin with a sensational statistic. Many readers get shocked by the facts and want to read more
• Include stories and personal experiences. This grabs the reader's attention and baits them so they want to reader more to find out what happened.
• Always make sure that the opening one or two paragraphs and well written and have many baits and incentives for the reader to read more.

Social Networks and Web Analytics

There a number of ways to track how your engagement is progressing. Below is a good way to get a summary about the Key Social Networks - just key in your URL

Do you believe that Reader Engagement is Important