Week 5, Lecture

- Websites and Web Analytics

• Websites Today
• Microsites and Websites
• Website Critical Success
Factors
• Website Analytics tools

Jeff Stewart – j.stewart@brookes.ac.uk

Websites In 2021? = 1.8 Billion websites

Today Number of active websites is

decreasing, less than 200
million are active

For live statistics, look here: http://www.internetlivestats.com/

And website
trends… Trends
• Websites are becoming simpler to use and easier to build
• Trend for Single Page Applications (think Google Maps)
• AI making inroads quickly - analyse big data and deliver a more
streamlined user experience, Chatbots for 24 hour user interaction

For now
• Websites for business are seen as professional, futureproof, offer deeper
analytics, are familiar to marketers and largely used as the Hub for all
online activities and Social Media
• For now…
 A Website consists of many web pages and represents the general image of the brand,
its brand name and its whole portfolio of products and services
Microsites • https://lucidworks.com/

& websites A Microsite is a small, simple, individual page, or a small cluster of web pages, and is
used for a specific reason e.g. to promote a campaign or a specific product or service.
Usually temporary but can grow.
• https://lucidworks.com/darkdata/

BENEFITS
What’s the Cost and Speed -
build, implement and
difference? measure ROI simply
and quickly
Improve SEO - makes
SEO appeal wider and
can backlink to main
website
Focussed – fewer
distractions than
main page, clearer
message
Experiment – test
ideas, learn, grow if
successful
Website Critical
1. Purpose - Goals and Target Users
Success Factors
2. Visibility - Search Engine Optimisation

3. Usability - Navigation & Structure

4. Engagement - Content Management

5. Conversion - Tracking & Optimisation

 • What are the main goals of the website?
Website Critical
Success Factors

1. Purpose -
• Who are the target users of the website?
Goals and • What is the primary aim of the website –
Target Users informing, selling, getting users to sign up
for a service, something else?
• Knowing the answers to the above
questions will help in communicating to
management, staff and agencies
 Search Engine Optimisation
SEO is the practice of optimizing a website’s position in the
Website Critical (SEO)
Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Success Factors • Two types of SEO:

1. On-page SEO: optimizing the impact of landing

pages, website content, images, keywords, keyword
phrases and description tags on the website
2. Visibility -
Search 2. Off-page SEO: relates to all mentions and links to a
website that is external to the website itself (i.e.
Engine social media links)
Optimisation
Every major organization is undertaking SEO so it’s not just a
matter of doing it, it’s a case of doing it more effectively
than everyone else.
 Key elements to consider:

• SEO friendly URLs

• Title pages, description of the pages and formatting
• Loading speeds, image optimization
• Keywords and description tags
• Subject specific content

On-page SEO… Advantages

• all of the criteria correlate to factors that offer a good customer

experience.
• Can be done in-house

Disadvantages
• Even though it can be done in house it must be done professionally
• Can take time to have impact if not linked to off-page SEO
 Search Engine: A system that
collects pages from the Web, saves them
in a massive database, indexes
the information and provides
a mechanism for people to search
through the data. (Kent 2020)

• Search engines automatically crawl through

websites to create a sophisticated database of
content using ‘searchbots’, ’robots’ (or bots)
‘spiders’ (Hanlon 2019)
• The ‘bots’, ‘spiders’ etc use complex algorithms
to index the information and rank it in search
results when people search.
 Organic Search
- the ‘natural’ way, where your website appears in the rankings without direct payment to the
search engine
- the aim is to be at the top of the first Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
- How?

Your website
Number 1!
Links to/from other websites Search Search
Crawl (Off-page SEO)

Website content results results

(On-page SEO)

Search SERP

Index
 The aim is to drive traffic to your
organization’s website

• Ensure that all social media sites have a working weblink

• All PR material should contain links to the website
• Ensure that listings in online directories contain the web address
• Encourage sharing of your website address by influencers and brand
advocate

Off-page SEO… Advantages

• Can be tailored to strategic objectives

• Highly measurable
• Payment linked can be linked to results

Disadvantages
• Links through intermediaries can be difficult manage/control
• Ongoing risks associated with mediated communication
 Backlinks

A backlink is simply a link from

one website to another.

Search engines like Google

use backlink as a ranking
signal for SEO.

Off-page SEO… Highly measurable.

Tool for checking website backlinks: https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker

Backlinks terminology used in analysis:

1. Number of backlinks - BL
2. Number of referral domains - RD
3. Ratio of RD/BL Ratio - as close to 1:1 is ideal
4. Number of outbound links from referral page on the RD
Links to/from other websites
(Off-page SEO)

Website content
Or… $
(On-page SEO)

Hyperlink to Google Ads video
What is Google Ads?
• Related to search across the
entire Google portfolio
• Different types of Ad
content, creative and search
page ranking are matched to
keyword search terms
• Chosen keywords or
keyword phrases are
purchased
• The price increases
depending on how popular
the particular keyword or
keyword phrase is
• Try it!
Google Ads
 Short Tail Keyword
• Related to search across the
entire Google portfolio
• Different types of Ad
content, creative and search
Long Tail Keyword
page ranking are matched to
keyword search terms
• Chosen keywords or
keyword phrases are
purchased
LOW PROBABILITY OF CONVERSION HIGH
• The price increases
depending on how popular
the particular keyword or
keyword phrase is

What is Google Ads? • Try it!

Google Ads
 • Related to search across the
entire Google portfolio
For this topic,
• Different types of Ad
there are many content, creative and search
less popular ways page ranking are matched to
to search for the
same thing.
keyword search terms
That’s why the • Chosen keywords or
tail of this graph
is very long (long keyword phrases are
tail) purchased
• The price increases
depending on how popular
the particular keyword or
keyword phrase is

What is Google Ads? • Try it!

Google Ads
Keywords and the Customer Journey Map
- Short tail keywords are used at the start of the journey
- Long tail keywords used as the customer gets closer to conversion
Sort Tail keywords Long Tail keywords

Need Information Search Evaluation of alternatives Purchase

Recognition Decision
User
Actions

Touchpoints

Keywords University Entry requirements Top ranking Digital Price comparison

UK University Digital Marketing
UK University Digital Marketing UK Marketing UK Digital Marketing
University University UK University
Emotions

Possible
Pain Points

Possible
Solutions
 SEO – hitting the Sweet Spot
Website Critical
Success Factors
Technical
The ‘under the hood’ Sweet Spot
aspects that affect
crawling, indexation,
UX and ultimately
2. Visibility - rankings

Search Off-page SEO On-page SEO

Engine Acquiring and

managing backlinks
from authoritative,
Creating site content
and optimising it for
target keywords and

Optimisation relevant sources to

boost site authority
and topical relevance
related terms to
increase relevance and
rankings
 Website Critical
Usability
Jacob Nielsen’s usability attributes
Success Factors
Satisfaction: How Learnability: How easy is it
pleasant is it to use the for users to accomplish
design? basic tasks the first time
they encounter the design?
Errors: How

3. Usability - many errors do users

make, how severe are
these errors, and how
Navigation & easily can they recover
from the errors?
Structure
Memorability: When users
return to the design after a
period of not using it, how easily
can they reestablish proficiency?
Usability 101: Introduction to Usability
https://
www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introd
uction-to-usability/
Efficiency: Once users
have learned the design,
how quickly can they
perform tasks?
Measuring Usability:
1. The difficult/expensive way:
https://
www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-
metrics/
2. The easy/cheaper way: crazy egg,
Uzabilla, clicktale and many others…
 Website Critical User Experience
Success Factors (UX)
Peter Morville’s UX Honeycomb and facets of
UX

3. Usability -
Navigation &
Structure

Peter Morville. JUNE 21, 2004 

http://semanticstudios.com/user_experience_design/
Website Critical Engagement priorities change based on the type
of website:
Success Factors
• Content Publisher - scrolling slowly down the
page, indicating the user is scrolling to read vs
scrolling to find out length of article.
• eCommerce site - viewing product details, or
4. Engagement spending a certain amount of time on a page.
- Content • Online Banking app – checking on an account
balance.
Management • University Website – watching an informational
video
• Etc..
 Typical metrics:

Website Critical Unique visitors

Success Factors
Frequency of visitors

Visitor recency

4. Engagement
Pages per session
- Content
Management Average session duration

Bounce rate

And many more…

 Interpreting the data
Website Critical Bounce Rate (as defined by Google Analytics): The percentage of single page
Success Factors visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page).

Bounce Rate is a measure of visit quality and a high Bounce Rate generally
indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren’t relevant to your visitors.
Ask yourself, is this normal for this industry?

4. Engagement
- Content
Management
 What Is a Conversion?

Website Critical When a website visitor does what you are trying to get them to do!
(Jeff Stewart)
Success Factors
Examples of conversions include:
• Making a purchase (for an ecommerce site)
• Completing a game level (for a mobile gaming app)
• Submitting a contact information form (for a marketing or lead
generation site)
5. Conversion • Reading an article (for an information site)

- Tracking & Conversion Tracking – tracks actual conversions, conversion rate,

and cost per conversion.
Optimisation Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) - uses ‘Split testing’ to monitor
the conversion performance of different elements of your ads and
pages to help optimize the online conversion rate
e.g. test different headlines, buttons, calls to action, or images on
your landing pages to see which variations in conversions.
Website Critical
Success Factors

5. Conversion
- Tracking &
Optimisation
 On-page SEO Analysis Off-page SEO Analysis

Website
Analytics Tools Semrush: Ahrefs Backlink Checker: https://
https://www.semrush.com ahrefs.com/backlink-checker
Search & Keywords Analysis Competitive Analysis

A few useful
Google Trends: SimilarWeb: https
tools… https://trends.google.com/t
rends/?geo=GB
://www.similarweb.com/

(there are Usability Website Traffic Analysis

many!)
Crazyegg: Google Analytics: https://
https://www.crazyegg.com/ analytics.google.com
Week 5, Lecture
- Websites and Web Analytics

• Websites Today
• Microsites and Websites
• Website Critical Success
Factors
• Website Analytics tools

Jeff Stewart – j.stewart@brookes.ac.uk