Its hard to grow up without hearing your parents or grandparents say “back in my day…” and then alluding to some life altering technology or new luxury that they didn’t have available to them when they were our age.
While the message was usually “hey appreciate how easy you’re life is, it was tougher back in my day” I catch myself saying the same thing to kids that aren’t more than a decade younger than me.
Just the other day I was talking to my teenage cousin who’s excited about getting her drivers license next year. Working in an industry that lives and dies by efficiency of driving routes, naturally I asked her if she was learning the shortest or quickest way to drive around the city.
With a not-so-sly rolling of the eyes she hit me with the news I have obviously been missing out on, “That’s what my iPhone is for… duh”
I was shocked, and not by the blatant exasperation, but that I realized that I had learned to drive before the iPhone was invented. I had to know where I was going before I got into the car or have a map book on hand and figure it out along the way.
How did I ever make it to where I was going without live turn by turn direction?
But my point isn’t to reminisce about the good ol’ days. My point is that there has been a huge change in the ways we can consume information. iPhones, iPads, Kindles and the like, all didn’t exist a few years ago. The personal computer was the end all be all of internet activity.
Today it seem that the personal computer is just a “thing I have to sync my ipod to.” But today I’m not even going to talk about how “we” consume information but rather how our customers consume information (and all you need is an internet connection on your favorite browsing device).
So what’s an Internet Browser?
A browser is like your window to the internet. At the most basic level, its a software program that lets you see web pages. The fact that you’re reading this means you’re already using one.
Popular browsers include Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, Chrome, Safari (Mac only), and Opera. (There are dozens of smaller players out there but we’re only going to focus on the mayor ones at this point.) And most of these have mobile versions as well to run on smart phones.
And like most software, there is more than one version available at any given time.
The companies or organizations that develop the browsers have updates, push out new features, and patch bugs in the software but leave it up to the user (that’s you) to update the software on their own machine.
So how do browsers work?
When a user, often referred to as a “client”, wants to see a webpage, that user types in the URL into the address bar of the browser. Without going into the gritty details, the browser then makes a request to the server where that website is hosted to see that webpage.
What the browser gets back from the server is set of instructions (code) that the browser interprets and displays to the user.
The part of all that that’s pertinent to us is that the browser gets “instructions” to how the page should look, not an exact image.
Ok so why does any of this matter?
Each browser, and even each version of each browser, interprets this set of instructions differently. So that website you had built for your company 5 years ago (ok more like 10 years ago 🙂 may not display properly in the current versions of the major browsers (the very browsers your customers are using to look you up online).
That means those cool custom graphics that were hot 10 years ago may force your text to run off the page or, even worse, not get displayed at all.
If our goal is to make doing business with us as easy as possible, don’t make your customers hunt around a broken website to find what they need.
So what do I do about it?
Well before we go off and start testing our website in a ton of different browsers let’s head over to our trusted friend Google Analytics and see exactly what a majority of our visitors are using to view our site.
A basic, top level report is available to us Audience > Technology > Browser & OS (you’ll see this in your analytics navigation menu)
What this report tells us is what browsers people are using when they visit our website.
We can see from the report in this example that 94% of our traffic comes from IE, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
If we drill down into each of those top 4, we can see the break down of each version. For example, if we click on Firefox, we can see that majority of the traffic comes from Firefox versions 9, 12, and 11.
Great! What Now?
Now we want to take a SAMPLING, not every one of them and see how your website looks on those different browsers.
First thing, head over to browsershots.org
Next, pick a few of the top browser versions you just saw in your report.
Enter your website URL into the appropriate place. In this example I’m using my own website but you would fill in your own URL instead of blacktoptolaptop.com
Wait while samples come back to you.
After a few minutes (it can take a long time if you pick too many samplings) you can see screen shots of what your website looks like in different browsers.
Here are some of my results:
I can click on each one of these to get a snapshot of what that particular browser displayed for this particular URL. (It happens to be my homepage)
Hopefully at this point there are no surprises. If you see anything scary, like someone took a sledge hammer to your website, its time to get in touch with your website developer.
Unfortunately all the online browser testing sites I’ve found have been sub-par for testing mobile devices. Probably the easiest way to test your website on an iPhone and Android phones is to just ask somebody that has one and take a look.
Try this out. Let me know what you get back. If everything looks good then rest easy.
If you getting back some ugly results, send them over to your web developer or leave a comment below and I’ll be sure to take a look.
Happy Browsing!
Even to a seasoned web veteran, Google Analytics can be a bit overwhelming. With an endless amount of data at your finger tips its easy to loose focus of metrics that can actually help you make better decisions in your business.
If you’re just starting out with website analytics, go slow.
Usually the best information comes from one or two lone metrics, not diving down into every page ad nauseum. Here are a few shoulds and should nots of your website analytics.
Should Not: Spend too much time on the Dashboard
Take a deep breath. Its not as scary as it looks.
By and large, beginners love to spend their time on the dashboard because the dashboard is where the BIG numbers are. Metrics like visits, pageviews, and visitors look the most impressive and are great for bragging rights. Ten thousand pageviews could make it sound like business is booming but pageviews by itself doesn’t tell you much.
Pageviews is a vanity metric.
Vanity metrics are any numbers that may look impressive but don’t offer any actionable information on their own. Let’s relate this to something tangible. Pageviews on your website is like a car dealership counting how many times somebody has test driven the red porshe on the lot. Some people fall in love at first sight and buy it on the spot. Other looky loo types may test drive it a dozen time with no intention ever to buy. Without knowing what type of of person is looking at car, the number of test drives doesn’t matter.
Do you want to own the dealership where 100 people a day test drive the porshe and no one buys it or the dealership that has one customer who actually is willing to pay for it?
Pageviews are like test drives, they dont mean much without a conversion.
Pageviews are also “artificially” high. I say “artificial” because although it may be an accurate count, it doesn’t represent customer activity. Have you ever looked at your competitors website? Look at more than one page on their site? You boost their pageview count but have no intention to buy something from them.
Even Google said this about pageviews:
"It is more useful as a basic indicator of the traffic load on your site and server rather than as a marketing measure."
“Looks” don’t grow your business, buyers do. Let’s look at some metrics that can tell us something useful.
Should: Look at your “Keywords”
Want to know how your customers talk about you? Look at the “keywords” link under “traffic sources”. For someone to find your website on the internet they can either type your websites url (http://www.yoursite.com) directly into the browser or they type something about you into a search engine like Google and (hopefully) your website shows up in the search results.
Heather Lutze author of The Findability Formula illustrates why knowing how your customers search for you is so important. If you’re an HVAC Contractor dont assume that someone with a broken air conditioner is going to type “HVAC Contractor” into Google. They’re going to type in “Air conditioner repair man.” You need to speak the same language as our customer while introducing them to the accurate industry jargon (via writing articles for their industry publications for example).
Use your top keywords to know what your customers think you do and use that same terminology to relate to prospective customers.
Should Not: Worry about your “Top Exit Pages”
Top Exit Pages describes itself pretty well. Its the pages that visitors are on before they exit your website. But Exit Pages can be two faced. In one sense, its never fun to say good bye, even if you never met your visitor face to face. Where are they going? Will they come back? Both tough questions to answer.
On the other hand, they might have just found exactly what they’re looking for.
Is your “Contact Us” page one of your top exit pages? Maybe all they needed was your phone number to call you.
Your best content may be your top exit page because you’ve thoroughly satisfied all of their questions.
Don’t fret about “exits.” Give your visitors quality information and they’ll be back when the time is right.
Should: Use the “About This Report” Feature
As complicated as analytics can be, Google does a great job of coaching you along the way. On the bottom left of every Google analytics page is the “About this Report” button. It provides a quick interpretation of the metrics you’re looking at.
For example, I have no idea what a “Bounce Rate” is. I navigate to the bounce rate page and click on the About this Report button.
Should Not: Try to Learn it all on your First Visit.
Take your time. Pick one metric and see if you can visualize how your customers are interacting with your website to make it that way.
Should: Pop the Hood on your Website
You change the fluids in your car every 3000 miles, your website deserves the same attention. None of this information is any good to you if you don’t take action. Revisit it regularly and it will be like an old friend in no time.
Leave a comment below mentioning how looking at your analytics has changed the way you do business.
Happy Analyizing!