Web. Orange you glad we’re doing a refresh?

A few days ago Melissa, Aaron, and I attended an AMA Webinar on Google Analytics and Website Optimizer—very cool. Google has free software that allows you to randomly test different versions of a page with live traffic. You can then determine which version of your site (different photo, headline, links, etc.) work best for the outcome you’re after (request more information, complete an online application, download X, whatever). I’ve got the entire presentation (actually, there are two) in pdfs if anyone is interested.

Other little gems I wrote down: 1.) A user decides within 8 seconds whether or not to click the “Back” button once they’ve landed on a page. Eight seconds seems like a very short time to me, then again, I’ve never ridden a bull. 2.) Only 20% of users read body copy…how much time should we spend agonizing over it? 3.) About 3% of visitors “convert,” or actually take the action you want them to. Since we get about 900,000 users per month to our site, that means that 27,000 should behave “appropriately.” Do we know what that desired outcome is?

Posted by Claire Jones at 11:40 AM | Trackback URI