To improve your poor website performance, you need to run website test tools to check your current website status and then find solutions to raise the quality of the site. Additionally, the metrics of Google Analytics also are helpful for you to analyze, synthesize, and understand your customer behaviors on your site.
However, these metrics of Google can make you misapprehend and not make your web better. So, what are they?
Misleading Metric #1 – Average Time on Page
A lot of people think that the term of average time on the page represents a metric to judge engagement or attention – in other words, how long people are spending on a page.
However, this calculation is not exact totally as well as reflect what it measured. The reason is that Google tracks time by calculating the time between pageviews or actions on your site. As a result, if there is a customer visits a page and then just leaves your site, Google does not record time on the page for that visitor.
The formula for Average Time on Page is equal Time on Page / (Pageviews – Exits).
Basing on the above formula, it can be seen clearly how damaged landing pages or help resources, which aim to provide visitors with everything they would need in a single visit. Take another example, one person sees your blog post on Google accidentally, and he reads it in 10 minutes as well as subscribes to your newsletter via a popup before closing the browser tab. Consequently, this visit would not be counted in your time on page metric at all.
This doesn’t mean that the metric is entirely useless, but it’s often very misleading, especially when evaluating engagement with content. Unless you have a specific reason to need it, you’re usually better off ignoring it.
Solution:
Set Links to Open in a New Window
You can make to improve time on page is to avoid losing readers every time they click through on a link. That’s why Angela Ash of Flow SEO recommends setting all links—even internal links— to open in a new tab.
Misleading Metric #2 – Conversion Rate (By Channel)
Using website test tools also makes you mislead of Conversion rate. By default, Google uses last-click attribution, which means that when a visitor converts, that transaction is credited to the last channel source from which they came to your website.
It means that if they went to your blog three times organically, then clicked on a Facebook retargeting ad and filled out your lead form, it would credit Facebook CPC with the conversion. Even though the visitor first found your blog through organic search, it wouldn’t count at all for conversions.
Instead, try using a multi-channel attribution model like Time Decay or Linear. These will distribute the credit across the different channels with which a user interacts.
Misleading Metric #3 – Bounce Rate
This metric is a bit different. It is actually recorded and reported pretty accurately. However, conducting the website test tools, many people still view it as a negative metric. Therefore, they find ways to minimize it.
In reality, it is not a huge problem when you see a high bounce rate. A high bounce rate can refer to that web visitors found everything they need on that page did not continue further into the site. For example, if a visitor read one of your landing pages and downloaded the white paper you offered before leaving, that should be considered a success, not a failure.
So, when seeing a high bounce rate, it does not mean your site is being bad condition and needs to be improved. However, do not completely ignore the bounce rate. It can be useful to look at and see how users are behaving. Just be sure to compare it to your expectations and goals to evaluate the page’s effectiveness.
Conclusion
To sum up, website test tools are helpful for you to manage a website as well as raise the rank of your site on Google. Besides, you also need to learn more knowledge about SEO, Google Analytics to improve website performance better. Hope the above information helps you with this.
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