Stores Online: Deciphering Google Analytics
November 23rd 2007 10:53 am
Wow, it’s been a long time since I posted!
This blog is a lot like my home improvement projects. I’m great at starting things, but not so great at finishing them. I’m embarrassed to tell you how many half-done moulding, torn-up floors, and walls with partial drywall you’d find in my house. The one home project I did finish was a cage for my pet rats made out of a bookcase.
But I’m digressing…
Since the last time I posted, I’ve gotten a few more orders. I still haven’t made much attempt at getting reciprocal links, although I did finally get up a links page. It has a single link on it, and I’m still waiting for that company to reciprocate.
One thing I did do is look at my Google Analytic results. I found that I had an enormous bounce rate: about 46% on the home page. A bounce is when someone goes to your site on one page and leave it again without visiting any other pages.
So, the question is, why are people leaving from the home page without going anywhere else?
I looked at one day for a sample of what’s happening. I found that I had 6 visitors, but 4 of them were bounces and showed an average time on the site of 0. I’m still not sure how this is possible. If the page loads enough for Google Analytics to register that there was a visitor, wouldn’t that mean the visitor would have spent some time on the page?
As an experiment, I assigned a different template to the site and change my images. I took out the few images of parents wearing the slings and added a banner image at the top that shows a few of these parents. That way there is only 1 image to load. I think this will make the page load faster.
Did it make a huge difference? Sadly, no. I still have over a 50% bounce rate. I’ve gotten one order this week, but I don’t think that was due to the page.
I also bought a Google Analytics 2.0 book. (Wel, actually, a friend asked what she could buy me for help with some Excel macros). I’ve only started it, but I’m hoping it will help me turn the Google Analytics data I’m seeing into changes I can make to my site that will result in more sales.
This blog is a lot like my home improvement projects. I’m great at starting things, but not so great at finishing them. I’m embarrassed to tell you how many half-done moulding, torn-up floors, and walls with partial drywall you’d find in my house. The one home project I did finish was a cage for my pet rats made out of a bookcase.
But I’m digressing…
Since the last time I posted, I’ve gotten a few more orders. I still haven’t made much attempt at getting reciprocal links, although I did finally get up a links page. It has a single link on it, and I’m still waiting for that company to reciprocate.
One thing I did do is look at my Google Analytic results. I found that I had an enormous bounce rate: about 46% on the home page. A bounce is when someone goes to your site on one page and leave it again without visiting any other pages.
So, the question is, why are people leaving from the home page without going anywhere else?
I looked at one day for a sample of what’s happening. I found that I had 6 visitors, but 4 of them were bounces and showed an average time on the site of 0. I’m still not sure how this is possible. If the page loads enough for Google Analytics to register that there was a visitor, wouldn’t that mean the visitor would have spent some time on the page?
As an experiment, I assigned a different template to the site and change my images. I took out the few images of parents wearing the slings and added a banner image at the top that shows a few of these parents. That way there is only 1 image to load. I think this will make the page load faster.
Did it make a huge difference? Sadly, no. I still have over a 50% bounce rate. I’ve gotten one order this week, but I don’t think that was due to the page.
I also bought a Google Analytics 2.0 book. (Wel, actually, a friend asked what she could buy me for help with some Excel macros). I’ve only started it, but I’m hoping it will help me turn the Google Analytics data I’m seeing into changes I can make to my site that will result in more sales.
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Nancy responded on 02 Apr 2008 at 11:48 pm #
Well, it looks like you are not longer on storesonline. Did you sell your domain or just decide to move off sol.
susb8383 responded on 04 Apr 2008 at 11:49 pm #
Very observant! I just did that a few days ago!
I still own the domain, but I feel like I’m just pouring money into SOL. I’ve meant to post about it, but just haven’t had time. Now that my taxes are done, maybe I’ll find the time.
I read a lot of internet marketing newsletters and listen to a lot of teleconferences. Some really smart people who make a lot of money say that one of the most important things is to get to know your customer. Instead of guessing what they’re looking for when they come to your site, you should really use some tools to find out. They also say that when someone comes to your site, you have a split second to get their attention.
So, how does this relate to SOL?
There are a lot of things I want to do with the site that I can’t because SOL has my hands tied. What I’m referring to is the ability to customize. At the sales conference, I was told repeatedly that if I purchased, I had full control over my html and I could customized the default cart.
This was simply not true.
Now I don’t think the salesmen purposely lied to me. I found out that in the version I was buying, a change that SOL made was to remove the ability to customize. I think the salespeople all have a previous version because they weren’t new customers, so they may not have realized this ability was gone.
I want to be able to put a survey on asking my customer what he’s looking for. I know SOL has a simple survey, but what I’m after is something that pops up when my customer leaves without purchasing. For that, I need to be able to add something to the body tag, which I can’t do.
Also, I’m disappointed with how slow the templates load. I’m also not happy with how much junk is at the top of my page source. If you know anything about optimization and you look at the actual page source, you’ll see a ton of stuff at the top of the page, like CSS styles. These really should be broken out into a separate file that the html calls so that the content is nearest the top. Google likes that.
So I guess I got fed up with paying 25.00 per month for hosting, but it’s not true hosting. I don’t have total control over my site. I don’t have true email ability (I just have the ability to redirect), etc.
I haven’t given up on my baby slings site. But what I’ve done is signed up for hosting at A Small Orange. For a tiny fee of 5.00 per month, I can have as many domains as I want. (They have price structure based on bandwidth, so when I start getting so much traffic that I’m going to run out, I can move up to 10.00/month).
Then I installed ZenCart, which is a free open source shopping cart.
I’m in the process of setting it up for a new set of products I’m going to sell, pet exercise wheels. (Check out critterwheels.com). My next thing is I’ll set up ZenCart for my baby slings and then point the domain there.
ZenCart is screaming fast compared to the StoresOnline templates. And there’s a ton of forum support. And it interfaces better with Paypal than SOL does. True, there’s more setting up on my end than with SOL, but I’m willing to do that.
Being able to have unlimited online stores for only 5.00 per month where I truly have total control of my website is a big difference from 25.00 per website where I only have the control SOL decides to give me.
That’s my long-winded explanation of why I’m no longer on StoresOnline.
Aren’t you glad you asked!
StoresOnline: Final Verdict | Internet Marketing Kultch responded on 24 Aug 2008 at 12:27 am #
[...] I already mentioned this in the comments of a previous post because somebody asked, but it deserves a post of its [...]
rochell responded on 25 Jun 2009 at 2:44 pm #
hi , i went into their seminar and was talked into buying their web program, i tried to canel without looking at it because the price was shocking 6,000.00 but they ask me to check it out for a frew more days and give it a try, i still have time to cancel and was going to give it a try but the money is holding me back. they promise to be their for u every step of the way and you don’t need to worry about anything because when the internet changes we changes with it at no extra charge. But what i couldn’t figure out was how was i going to sit around and just watch the money come in?
don’t you have to process the orders? even if you do have a dropshipper? don’t you have to keep up with the customers? I don’t know, i’m in a hard place on indecision. Oh yeah they give you a merant account and u just pay the monthy fee if u do business, only pay 4 hosting if your web site is up and ready to run. can u help!? dated june 25th 09, cause every thing i have been reading about storesonline was back in 07 and 08, do u know if they have gotten better with their services since they got all the complaints?