Google Anayltics New Feature ‘Visitor Flow’ Explained

When optimising and evaluating PPC campaigns, it is crucial to amalgamate Google AdWords and Google Analytics data in order to see a true picture of a Campaign/Ad Group/Keywords performance. Two key things to look at in Analytics would be Revenue and Bounce Rate to make sure that your keyword is profitable and not wasting money. Any keyword with a high bounce rate is just wasted budget. However, what if a high percentage of people click on your PPC ad, land on your website and stay on your page longer than 30 seconds and interact with it, but then leave your site? Technically it isn’t counted as a bounce. This is where Visitors Flow can be of service. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing for a Google Geek, but it holds valuable data about the way visitors interact and move through your site. This information could be found in the old analytics, but not in the same way as the new Visitor Flow capabilities. The way it is presented makes it easy to spot areas for optimisation or A/B testing and also makes it easy to present your reasons for potential changes to your clients. By selecting Paid Search Traffic and filtering down into the keywords, you can see the popular journeys that take place after a PPC ad is clicked. So whilst a keyword might not have a high bounce rate, it could have a high ‘Drop Off’ percentage after the first page. In one example I saw, the keyword had sent 449 visitors to a landing page, this page had a 30% bounce rate so appeared average, yet only 157 of them continued onto other pages; a ‘Drop Off’ rate of 63.1%. Even more alarming, the next most popular interaction was with the search function on the site. For PPC it highlights that a large proportion of the traffic aren’t finding what they are looking for. This can then result in changes to landing pages, match types, negative keywords, and ad copy. It can also be a huge factor in the overall conversion rate of your website, something which can be tackled through CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation). Here at YOMA, we are Google Analytics Qualified and able to sift through your Analytics data and find potential problem points as well as solutions. Contact us today for more information about our PPC and CRO services.