Keeping them when they get there?

[Ricesnaps]

Before I go any further, this is not a request for the crown jewels or your business secrets.

What it is, is a way of understanding how I can do thing better!

Those of you with webs site that have a stats package. I wonder, if you have a length of stay percentage for visitors staying less than 30 second (or whatever the lowest stay length is in your stats) that is 50% or less, I wonder if you would mind holding your hand high in the air. All I want to do it get a feel for the way your home page is laid out so I can apreciate what it is that is keeping people on your site.

I understand that the length people stay has a great deal to do with what they first see, so I want to make what they first see on my site better!

Apologies if this is too much to ask, but if you don't ask, you don't get!

If you want to see my site, please PM, happy for you to look, but it is not the site shown in my footer!

[alexperrins]

Wish I could help. Most of the site visitors I have accumulated are myself as my site is so new. Feel free to give me feedback if you have time though :)

[Sam]

A few thigns:
*working links
*Not loads of confusing and jumbling text
*No crappy pics or colours
*Make it looks smart
*Make it cover the screen height / width without going over the boarders

These are my things i personally say.. I am not saying this is what anyone else goes with.

Sam

[Danno13]

Just checked on mine and 73% stay for less than 30seconds. However, i get loads of enquiries through my website so it can't be that bad! Probably about 70% of all enquiries are from the website, the rest from the Yellow Pages and refferals.

You have to remember though that this figure includes all the search engine spiders, spambots looking for your email address and other random scripts running across the internet.

[Ricesnaps]

Just checked on mine and 73% stay for less than 30seconds. However, i get loads of enquiries through my website so it can't be that bad! Probably about 70% of all enquiries are from the website, the rest from the Yellow Pages and refferals.

You have to remember though that this figure includes all the search engine spiders, spambots looking for your email address and other random scripts running across the internet.
It shouldn't include the robots - mine doesn't, they have there own section. The percentage visit length is purely the people who have clicked on you and not the robots. I'm not much better, but I would say 73% is not a good figure. Out of interest, if you are willing to say, roughly how many hits are you getting on your site each day / month and how many enquiries? (rather than actual bookings)?

[Corabar Entertainment]

Matt - the first thing I would check is HOW people are coming to your site - ie is it via relevant searches.

eg If 30% of visitors are arriving on your site because they searched for an image, or if they searched for 'lights in Ipswich' - these visitors weren't looking for a mobile disco in the first place and so nothing on earth is going to make them stay. If this is the case, it may be that it's your keywords, etc that need tweaking. Traffic per se means nothing if it's not RELEVANT traffic.

Generally speaking (as I understand it from reading up on the subject and discussions with people I know in the business) anything around 50% or more making a serious visit to your site is considered good (but obviously that is only the start - you need to see how many of those actually make enquiries with you, and of course, how many of those make a booking) - you will always get a lot of people who have landed on your site by accident. These could be people who have made too general a search, eg 'hire mobile disco'. They could be looking for a DJ in the Scotland, or they could just be looking for equipment hire. Obviously, they aren't going to hang around.

If, however, you are getting a large proportion of people landing on your site have made highly relevant searches and these people are disappearing instantly, then and only then would I be looking to change the content/design/style/layout or whatever of the site.

Stats are great - but only if you delve deeper into them and spend some time analysing them..... looking at them 'cold' can give a VERY misleading picture.

[alexperrins]

Agreed, my stat software is pretty basic - I am thinking of upgrading - however I have found that 8% of my visitors are from the United States! fortunately I have invested a bit if time making sure I have reasonable search engine prescence but that makes it very hard to work out where all my potential customers are coming from and how long they are staying on my site!
The site itself has only been in existence for 2 months and I'm not doing fantastically well from it at the minute, but that might be to do with the fact I've only done a few gigs since it's been up and running and that it's not finished - not really sure at the moment.
Anyway, I have had an amazing 114 hits so far this month, which is madness. 2 from Sweden as well somehow but there we are.

While we are on the subject, anybody know any good free software which will monitor this for me?

[Danno13]

Rice.. I get roughly 300-400 unique visitors a month. And anywhere between 4 at 20 enquiries a month. Jan - Mar this year I had the most for people booking events over the summer. Its just started to pick up again now for weddings next year, always nice when you have things confirmed nice and early!

My stats package is awstats by the way.. and the total visits shown at the top of the whole page matches that in the "time viewed for" section, so i assume it must include bots too....

It would be interesting to know what common figures are for other peoples websites. Like i say i've always thought of my website being quite succesful, so haven't paid much attention to this particular stat. Although, i do keep an eye on where my hits come from.

[Corabar Entertainment]

A decent free stats package is http://my.statcounter.com

[Ricesnaps]

Rice.. I get roughly 300-400 unique visitors a month. And anywhere between 4 at 20 enquiries a month. Jan - Mar this year I had the most for people booking events over the summer. Its just started to pick up again now for weddings next year, always nice when you have things confirmed nice and early!

My stats package is awstats by the way.. and the total visits shown at the top of the whole page matches that in the "time viewed for" section, so i assume it must include bots too....

It would be interesting to know what common figures are for other peoples websites. Like i say i've always thought of my website being quite succesful, so haven't paid much attention to this particular stat. Although, i do keep an eye on where my hits come from.
I have awstats too - provided with my host. I think if you look closely, the section which lists the robots visit is not actually included in the total unique hits figure at the top. Might be wrong, but I am fairly certain that awstats is able to differentiate between them and other visitors.

To address the other thoughts.... I would say that yes, most of my traffic is indeed fairly relevant - most is through direct entry of domain name or bookmarks - so people who have my card or have seen me somewhere. Some if links from other sites - UK- Disco doing rather well right now and the thest is search engine. The search engine phrases are all stuff like - wedding disco Ipswich, suffolk disco, party music in woodbridge and so on. I get about 170 odd "unique" hits each month (it's important to be clear between hits and unique hits, because one visitor could visit you home page 15 times during one visit to you site - the visit is generating 1 hit but the page has been viewed 15 times during that hit). From that I am running at about 65% leave before 30 secs and have about 5 - 10 enquiries each month.

I have to say that the great thing is I generally convert 75% of those enquiries.

There was a comment about the US being where the traffic comes from. Now I have always assumed that was because of the way the visitors were routed and not because they were from the states - or am I wrong?

So in summary, I think my referals are sound but I am not certain that my home page is grabbing peoples attention. I am not planning a complete re-design by any means, but might make some tweeks to what I already have.

[alexperrins]

Thanks Corabar. No idea about the guys from the US, baffling really! I'll have to look into it :)

[Ricesnaps]

Just checked my stats and it doesn't include robots in the top figure.

Anyway, back to my original ask - anyone have a site that has less than 50% leave before 30 secs?

[Vectis]

30%

But then yesterday I went and changed the site... hopefully for the better... so who knows?!! Certainly something I'll be monitoring over the coming weeks! :p

42% stay between 30 secs and 5 mins
18% between 5 mins and 20 mins

The rest stay even longer!! Mind you that's probably people downloading video clips of recent gigs.