In this eNsight, I review ROI of eNitiate Website traffic, based on the completion of 6 specific actions – called goals – by the visitors to our site.
All the data that I use for the review comes from Google Analytics.
Because they treat their Websites as digital addresses and not lead generators cc @rochemamabolo #eNiversity #LORAneurs #LORADigital
— Bra Willy Seyama (@BraWilly_Seyama) August 15, 2020
Table of Contents
About this eNitiate Website performance analysis series
We took the decision in our 11th anniversary month – November 2019, to actively improve the performance of our Website, an important channel for eNitiate given our content marketing focus that has been pursued since October 2009.Â
The key performance areas that we aim to improve are (1)Â quality of our Web content, (2) discoverability on search engines, and (3) user experience.Â
This is the 8th detailed account of eNitiate Web performance analysis, and the third published quarterly report, is since November 2019.
Key insights from the published Web performance reports to date:
Here below are summary key insights from the published reports in this series.
November 2019 review
The key insight was that our eNsights are read by geographically diverse market.Â
Thus, our content development approach should have a broad appeal, or at least make a consideration for readers beyond the African borders.
April series (5 eNsights in total): 12-day SEO challenge
The key insight was that the desired SEO improvements are not a once-off event.
Thus, we must closely monitor the performance of the eNitiate site on an ongoing basis, and effect continuous improvements as required.
Quarter 1 of 2020 review
The key insight was that eNsights, alternatively called blogs, have been playing an increasingly important role in increased traffic to the Website, a large portion of which has increasingly been coming from the organic search channel. Â
Quarter 2 of 2020 review
The key insight was that analysis of performance of the top 10 Web pages provides refined learnings that can be converted into actionable tasks more effectively, as compared to analysis of only the aggregate Web data.
The findings and insights of the published Web performance review reports to date have led to implementation of improvements – some big and some small – in line with the identified 3 key performance areas.
Recap of eNitiate Website performance indicators
Two of the big improvements thus far have been the revision of key Web performance metrics and goals, which were revealed in the Quarter 2 report.
Here they are:
Combined, the metrics below are key indicators of the eNitiate Website’s health status:
- VISITOR traffic is an indicator of the Website’s overall effectiveness.
- ORGANIC SEARCH traffic is an indicator of the site’s improved rankings on Google and other search engines.
- DIRECT traffic is a measure of WhatsApp as an effective visitor recruiting platform.
- MOBILE traffic is an indicator of quality of user experience.
- PAGEVIEWS, ENTRANCES, EXITS, and DURATIONS of top 10 pages are an indication of the quality of published content.
The following goals, which are the desired actions that we want visitors to our site to take, are the ultimate measure of eNitiate Website’s return on investment (ROI): Â
GOAL 1: Shares of Web content on social media
GOAL 2: Visits that last over 3 minutes
GOAL 3: Frequency of Contact Us enquiries
GOAL 4: Clicks to the eNsights page
GOAL 5: Company profile downloads
GOAL 6: Newsletter subscriptions
The revised metrics and goals above are central to my latest review of the eNitiate Website’s performance for the first 9 months of this year, the results of which I share in the rest of this eNsight.
Here we go.
1. Overall Website performance for the January to September
Building on the review report from Quarter 2, here are the graphs of overall Web traffic growths and contributions for the period January to September:
Graph 1
Findings:
Overall growth of visitors for Q1-Q3 – where Q denotes a quarter – is 56%.
While the trend for Pageviews mirrored visitors, the rate of growth has been lagging behind.
There was a slight decline in year on year traffic for Quarter 3.
As Graphs 3 and 4 below show, the decline in Q3’s performance can be explained partly by zero traffic contribution from paid media (display and paid search), which was used to boost traffic in Q3 of 2019, but was not used at all in 2020 to date.Â
Graph 2
Findings:
The high visitor growth in the first 6 months of 2020 has positively influenced the quarterly contributions to date, when compared to 2019.
The negative growth in Q3 (Jul-Sep) has resulted in its contribution almost halving vs 2019.Â
Insights:
The overall performance of the eNitiate Website continues to show that improvements that have been effected since November 2019 are bearing fruit.
In addition, findings and insights to be shared in the rest of this eNsight will show that this is an ongoing process, partly necessitated by ever-changing Web technology, digital content consumption trends and a never-static combination of effective, creative and exploratory content development approach.
2. Detailed Website performance review
2.1. Growths and contributions by sources of visitor traffic
Here are the graphs of growths and contributions of the different channels that are the sources of eNitiate Web traffic:
Graph 3
Graph 4
Findings:
Contribution to traffic from the organic search channel (Graph 3) has almost doubled over the 3 quarters to date, thanks to robust growth of almost 200% during all the 3 quarters (Graph 4).Â
Clearly, this channel was the primary driver of the overall growth of 56% for the period under review (Graph 1).Â
Contribution by the direct channel, made up of mainly WhatsApp, also grew.Â
WhatsApp is becoming an increasingly valuable platform for eNitiate Web traffic.
[DIRECT] in theory is the people who have typed in the URL directly to their browser, but in reality, it means anyone who arrives at the site from a source that cannot be tracked. The source of this traffic is generally links that have been sent to friends/colleagues and then copied and pasted into web browsers. Traffic of this kind is generally referred to as ‘dark social’. A general rule of thumb is that for every three people reaching your site via social, a further 7 will be arriving from ‘dark social’, which will appear as direct.
1 in 10 visitors comes from social networks.
Contribution to traffic from this source declined by more than half, and this is not good news.
The paid media (display and paid search) was used in 2019 to boost Web traffic, but this channel has not been used at all in 2020 to date.
2.2. Growths by devices
Findings:
The average growth in visitors to the eNitiate Website for the Q1-Q3 period (GREEN bar in Graph 5) has been driven by the mobile device performance.
Decline in Q3 visitor traffic growth happened across all the 3 devices.Â
As Graph 6 below shows, the tablet’s contribution to visitor traffic is very small.
Thus, the impact of this device’s growth is negligible.Â
2.3. Contributions by devices - Jan to Sep 2020
Let us dig deeper for more refined findings related to devices used to access the eNitiate Website:
Graph 6
Findings:
There has been a 5% year-on-year swing between mobile and desktop devices.
Graph 7
Findings:
Contribution by mobile device has been growing consistently over the 3 quarters (Jan-Sep 2020).
Graph 8
Findings:
Desktop stands out for organic search traffic.
Mobile device is the main device for social media traffic.
Insights
Star performers that have been driving traffic to the eNitiate Website are organic search channel and the mobile device.Â
Given that desktop is the main device for organic search while mobile device drives social media traffic, a healthy balance from these two devices is ideal.Â
Performance of social media channel is a concern, and it requires putting in place a plan is to reverse the decline going forward.
3. Review of Top 10 pages
3.1. Performance of Top 10 pages by views
Below is a table of the top 10 Web pages by number of views for the period Jan to Sep 2020.
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You can either view the table below in landscape format, or tap on it and scroll horizontally, so that you can see all the columns.
| Page | Date Published | Contribution to Pageviews | Entrances (%) | Exit (%) | Time Spent on Page (min:sec) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May, 2014 | 15.58% | 96.23% | 65.04% | 0:02:02 | |
| Jun, 2019 | 8.43% | 95.17% | 88.43% | 0:06:33 | |
| Oct, 2019 | 6.75% | 98.00% | 84.66% | 0:05:21 | |
| Jul, 2019 | 4.81% | 95.81% | 73.96% | 0:01:09 | |
| Jan, 2020 | 4.61% | 97.34% | 87.59% | 0:04:57 | |
| Sep, 2017 | 3.40% | 94.97% | 86.41% | 0:05:03 | |
| Mar, 2020 | 2.98% | 79.13% | 79.62% | 0:05:07 | |
/13-percent-of-countries-in-africa-contribute-66-percent-to-facebook-users/ | Jul, 2019 | 2.45% | 95.71% | 78.42% | 0:03:55 |
| Aug, 2016 | 2.32% | 95.31% | 92.75% | 0:09:32 | |
| Aug, 2020 | 2.17% | 70.69% | 88.50% | 0:05:03 | |
| Total/Average Top 10 | N/A | 53.50% | 94.14% | 73.11% | 0:04:52 |
Column descriptions, findings and Insights:
Description:
The column displays the top 10 pages on the eNitiate Website by number of pageviews, with live links.
Findings and insights:
9 out of the top 10 pages are all eNsights (blogs).
Description:
The column displays the dates when the top 10 pages were published.
Findings and insights:
Excluding the Homepage;
- 1 eNsight was published in 2016;
- 1 in 2017;
- 4 in 2019; and
- 3 in 2020.
Description:
This column displays the contributions of each top 10 page to the total Web pageviews for the period under review.Â
Findings and insights:
The top 10 pages contribute 5 in every 10 Web Pageviews (see last row in the table).
Thus, getting the top 10 pages – less than 2% of total number of published pages on the eNitiate Website at the time of publishing this eNsight –Â to perform at peak is in line with the 80:20 principle.
The Homepage contributed 22.4% to Web Pageviews in 2019.
The decline in the contribution of Pageviews by this main landing page adds to the important role played by eNsights.
Description:
This column displays the percentage of times when the top 10 pages serve as the direct entry to the site, alternatively called landing pages.
Findings and insights:
The top 10 pages are accessed directly by the visitors to the site, as evidenced by the high percentage (94%) of Entrances.
The Entrance percentage for 2019’s top 10 pages was 85%.Â
Thus, ensuring that quick load speeds of the top 10 pages is key, and this will be the subject of sequel eNsight in this series.
Description:
This column displays the percentage of times when the top 10 pages serve as the direct exit points from the site.
Findings and insights:
7 out of 10 visitors to the top 10 pages exit directly from them, this meaning that the 3 remaining visitors view at least 1 additional page before exiting the site.Â
In 2019, 6 out of 10 visitors exited directly, while 4 others viewed additional pages before exiting the site.
The increase in Exit percentage can be partly explained by the 5% increase in contribution by mobile devices (Graph 6), whose users are known for shorter visit durations when compared to desktop users.
Description:
This column displays average time spent on each top 10 page, in minutes and seconds.
Findings and insights:
Visitors to the top 10 pages spend close to 5 minutes reading the content on them, while the average aggregated time spent on the site is 1 minute 15 seconds.
The average duration on 2019’s top 10 pages was 03 minutes 15seconds (average aggregated time spent on the site = 1:57).
It is pleasing to see that the consistency of improved results is also reflected by the average duration on the top 10 pages.
3.2. Quarterly contributions
The role of top 10 pages in the improved performance of the eNitiate Website is amplified by the results of their average contributions to Pageviews and Entrances, as displayed in Graph 9.
Findings
Without doubt, improvement effort should be focused on the top 10 pages and not the all the more than 550 pages of the site.Â
4. Review of goal completions
Review of the performance of the 6 eNitiate Website goals that we track is the theme of this eNsight.
Description of each of the 6 goals, which are denoted by numbers in this section, can be found in the Recap section above.Â
NOTE:Â A goal is regarded as completed when the desired call-to-action was undertaken during a visit.
Here are the 5 graphs with the relevant results:
Graph 10
Calculation of goal completion (or conversion) rate:
Findings:
There was no recorded data for goals 5 (company profile downloads) and 6 (newsletter subscriptions) to date.
Graph 11
Findings:
Only goal 2 – visits that last over 3 minutes – grew versus 2019, and this was driven by Q1 performance.
There was no recorded data for goals 5 (company profile downloads) and 6 (newsletter subscriptions) to date.
Graph 12
Findings:
There has been a discernible increase in the contribution of goal 2 (visits that last over 3 minutes), at the expense of goals 3 (number of enquiries) and 4 (visits to the eNsights (blog) page).Â
There was no recorded data for goals 5 (company profile downloads) and 6 (newsletter subscriptions) to date.
Graph 13
Findings:
6 in 10 visits from organic search source result in goal completion.
This is a very high conversion rate by any standard, and it is also the only source/media in the top 10 that is above for the average for top 10 sources/media (last bar in Graph 12).Â
On the bottom side of the scale, the conversion rate of blackagencies.co.za, a listing Website, is way lower than the top 10 sources/media average at 0.36%.
The average top 10 sources/media conversion rate for 2019 was 8.76%, and Google Search’s rate was 44.62%.
Thus, 2020’s average source/media conversion rate was an improvement for both indicators.
Graph 14
Findings:
4 of the top 10 pages had goal conversion rates above the average top pages (last bar in Graph 13).
The average top 10 pages conversion rate for 2019 was 6.14%, and the Homepage’s rate was 20.17%.
Thus, top 10 pages’ conversion rate for 2020 declined for both indicators.
Insights
Accordion to Wordstream, average Website landing page conversion rates range between 2.35% and 5.31%.
eNitiate Website’s average landing conversion rate (Graph 9) of 3.04% is within the range.Â
However, results of goal conversion rates of top 10 sources/media (Graph 12) and top 10 pages (Graph 13) show that there is an opportunity for improving the average conversion rate, especially of the latter.Â
Key takeaways and future focus areas
There is a need to conduct deeper analysis of the eNitiate Website for improvement of goal conversion rates, guided by the 10 pages results found in Graph 13.
Results will be shared in Q4 report in this series.
In addition, we will continue to monitor performance of the site across the identified key performance indicators for continuous improvement.
Here is a bonus eNsight, coming out of this series:
