Google Analytics Releases Web Usage Trends
The world’s largest website analytics tool recently released aggregated website usage data that is useful for those firms looking for website "benchmarks." The data is also useful for uncovering trends in website visitors' behavior.
In its July Google Analytics Benchmarking newsletter, the metrics giant compared usage from November 2010-February 2011 with the same period the year before. The data showed a decline in both website pages viewed per visit (4.5 vs. 4.9) as well as the average time on site, which was 5:23, down 26 seconds from the year prior. While part of these declines could be due to the decreasing patience of website visitors, we believe most of this decline is due to improved website design/usability and enhanced search results which allow visitors to find what they are looking for faster. The bounce rate - the percentage of visitors who visit only one page and then leave - also declined 1.2 percent, to 47 percent, which is likely the result of enhanced search results and links.
As one might imagine, the time visitors spend on a website varies based on how they got there. Visitors referred from a linked site spend more time on a website than any other source of traffic - a full minute more. This confirms the importance of ongoing efforts to provide valuable information that directories, bloggers and other websites will want to link to.
For those with international operations, the report provides some breakdown of traffic by country. It also provides information for those monitoring the operating systems used to access websites. The overall trends in this area are that Windows users continued to decline (although they still make up nearly 85 percent of web users). Macintosh grew slightly to 5.2 percent, while Linux was basically flat, at .7 percent. The biggest growth came in the "other" category, which grew from 5 to 9.3 percent, largely due to the growth in web access from smartphones with specialized operating systems.
If you’d like more information on the Google Analytics report or would like an assessment of your website’s traffic and how to improve it, please call or email Parthenon.
