Your Website Users Are Trying to Tell You Something

Have you ever gotten a message from a website visitor that says:

"Hi there. I just found your website after searching for the phrase 'how to fix my inbound marketing' on my desktop computer. I spent about three minutes on your homepage, navigated to your latest blog post, and decided that your website design was confusing and not what I wanted. I then left your website and continued my search. I thought you'd want to know why I left!"?

By using the HubSpot web analytics dashboard, you're going to be able to gain clarity on how all of your website visitors interact with your site, and they have a lot to say with their actions! 

In this post, we'll discuss some of the behavior data in the web analytics dashboard, and we'll shed some light on what your website users may be trying to tell you.

 I'm Interested in You From 9-5.

The device type breakdown shows the divide between mobile and desktop users that visit your website. When your pie chart looks like this one, with only 10% coming from mobile, it's easy to jump to conclusions. One conclusion that you can assuredly disregard is that your users aren't using a mobile device at all. ComScore reports that the average person in the US spends 87 hours each month on a mobile device. 

Mobile visits are expected to be lower for the B2B industry. Since mobile usage dips lower than desktop usage during the day, we can assume the majority of adult workers are using a desktop device while at work. If you're in a B2B company, your buyer personas are more likely to be browsing your website during work hours at their desk, rather than on their smartphone over the weekend.

But don't write off those mobile users just yet. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, a user is 40% more likely to buy in-store after visiting your website. Additionally, the mobile user is two times more likely than a desktop user to share your content, regardless of your industry. (Source) 

When you see a low percentage — i.e. <15% of mobile users — that's consistent month-over-month, make sure the desktop browsing behavior aligns with your buyer persona. If there's not a clear reason why mobile users are seemingly absent, there may be a different cause, which is described in the next section.

You've Neglected My Mobile Experience.

Use Website Grader to easily test your website speed on mobile, and take the time to see it for yourself on your mobile device. Imagine you're a first-time visitor on your website, and ask yourself: Do you know where to go next? Is it easy to navigate and click on things? And is the amount of text is overwhelming? 

This study shows that 88% of users are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience, regardless of device type. When you see that mobile usage is low, make sure you aren't losing users to a poor mobile experience. If the percentage of your mobile users has diminished over time, the next section may shed light on the cause. 

Hello, Hola, Guten tag, こんにちは.

Take a look at the sessions country widget in the web analytics dashboard to see where your website traffic is coming from. This view can be especially helpful if you're a global company or aspiring to expand your business to countries other than where you're located.

You can adjust the time filter to look at a certain time frame and evaluate the traffic on a rolling date range. If you find surprises in the breakdown, you may want to take a closer look at your contacts database and evaluate the activities that those from a specific country are taking.

You might uncover a persona in a country that you typically haven't interacted with in the past. Take advantage of this data to uncover the global potential based on who's interacting with your website.

I'm Just Not That Into You.

Sessions on the web analytics dashboard shows the number of sessions split by new and returning visitors. With this metric, you're able to see how many people are engaging with your website for the very first time. You'll be able to see how your site performs over time — are you getting new visitors?   

Conversely, you'll be able to understand exactly how much of your traffic is return traffic. While return traffic will ebb and flow each day, downward trends can be indicative of people not finding what they need. When the wrong message gets to the wrong person, that website user may not return. 

However, the sessions metric isn't the only indicator of how engaged your website visitors are. The engagement metrics widget can help you understand how your site visitors are interacting with your content. A quick reminder here: The bounce rate percentage is the number of visits that visit only one page divided by the total number of visits to that page.

This bounce rate is an aggregate for your entire website. When a website bounce rate is above 50%, it's suggested to take action by testing out new messaging and UI changes with A/B testing. Avinash Kashik (Google) reports that a bounce rate in the 41-55% is an average range, with 26-40% being a goal to aim for. In short, when your website's bounce rate is high, your message and content is not topically aligned with your visitors.

This Isn't What I Was Expecting to See.

If you're seeing low engagement metrics, you'll want to investigate what seems to be confusing for your website visitors. The average amount of time spent on your website and the number of pages that are viewed can quickly illuminate when your content isn't aligning with what the visitor expected to see. 

Get closer to the root of the problem with the session engagement rates by source and the bounce rate by source widgets of the web analytics dashboard. In the example above, social media has a bounce rate of 71.94%, which is much higher than all of the other sources. The session length also shows to be significantly shorter for users that have social media as a source, when compared to all of the others.

A quick audit of social media messaging should be conducted. The messaging should be compelling and attracting the right types of people to this website. The majority of traffic coming from social media spend a minute reading the page and exit the website. This means there's room for improvement in aligning the website content with the messaging that's driving traffic to the page. 

For added detail, the bounce rate by source shows a day-by-day view of each source's bounce rate average. This is a great way to see if a specific email marketing and paid search or social campaigns are performing as you expected.

I Like What You Have to Say. 

The users who like what you have to say can be seen in a combination of a number of widgets on the dashboard. When the raw number of returning sessions increases along with the engagement metrics, such as the number of pages and average time on site, it will be time to evaluate performance at the page level — what content is resonating with your website visitors and why? 

The next time you want to figure out how your website visitors feel about your website, and what they need from the site, make the web analytics dashboard your first stop to determining how your website is perceived.