I love the month ago today posts because it gives me a chance to really dig into the analytics of my site. A month ago I wrote this post, How To Fix Your Site. It’s about targeting your site weak spots by simply comparing it to Google’s Analytic Benchmarking option.

Taking my own advice, I found that this site was below average in total page views compared to other sites similar to mine. So for the past thirty days my primary goal has been to look for the little things that I could do to the site to increase page views. The end results? I managed to get 25% more in page views compared to last month, a .5% decrease in bounce, and a 12% increase average time on site.

How I Increased My Page Views

Taking a look at my journal for the past thirty days I did a lot to make those numbers go up.

Here is what I did:

• Worked on layout – I fixed a couple of alignment issues I wasn’t happy about.
• Made the Previous and Next posts on top of the post more visible
• Added an additional Add Your Comment link immediately below the post – The only one I had before was at the very bottom by the form, below any previous comments
• Added a comment reply notifier – This simply alerts those that have already commented on the post that there  was another comment made. This an a optional feature for users. They can say not to be notified.
• Reduced the introduction message on home page – I wanted to bring the blog content up more, making it more visible.

To figure out what scored best I first looked at the difference between new visitors and returning. This can usually be an easy clue, but for me this time there was a .01% difference in its initial analysis. I then crossed off the possibility of the layout change. I believe it helped, but I am certain it was not enough to be noticeable. I also crossed off the last item where I changed the home page introduction message. I had just done that a few days ago, and it’s simply to early to tell.

I then started comparing the graph with my journal to see if there was any corresponding changes. Looking at the graph in weekly mode the number simply started going up a month ago so that didn’t do me any good except for the fact that the first change I made was on day one, and it was where I increased the visibility of the Previous and Next posts links below the title of each posts. Looking my Clicktale analytics, only a very small percentage of users click these links though, so I crossed that one off. The first week increase must have been post quality related.

Using Clicktale again to see if visitors were clicking the new comment link, I saw little usage, but some is better than none so I am keeping it.

This lead me to just one thing left besides the parts working as a whole. It was the comment reply notifier. Using Google Analytics I decided to see if there was an increase in return visitors compared to previous dates after it’s installment. Return visitors jumped 16%!

Targeting Improvements For Return Visitors

When I started out a month ago, my goal was not to target return visitors. It was simply to increase page views however I could. I wanted to increase visitor engagement. It turned out however, by adding the the comment notifier I got three big winners. New visitors that leave a comment, and ask to be notified about future post comments will most likely become return visitors if someone else leaves a comment. That is two wins right there. Another page view (by them viewing the new comment), and a new visitor now converted to a returning visitor.

The third big, big, big win here is the type of traffic that is being gained. Return visitors are my favorite visitors. Returning visitors are the ones that make blogs interesting by commenting. Returning visitors are the ones that generate tons of page views, and most importantly returning visitors are the ones that tell others about your site.

My Next Fix

So taking my own advice again (How To Fix Your Site) for this next thirty day period, I have calculated that I am still behind in page views. That surprised me a little after the substantial gain I just made. It could be possible though that my gain was big because I have plenty of room for improvement. Another thirty days of increasing page views is in the works for me. This time I’m wondering if converting new visitors to returning visitors could be the easiest way. We will see. Your free advice in the comment box below is always welcome too!

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