Preliminary Report on IMCA Website Traffic

PlanWare

Preliminary Report on IMCA Website Traffic

1.Introduction

This report on the IMCA’s website traffic was compiled by Brian Flanagan of PlanWare on 1st October 2011. The objective was to provide baseline data and highlight key trends and patterns to help inform measures to increase traffic.

It concentrates mainly on the new site and covers the period fromits launch on 8th February 2011up to 24th September 2011. Data was derived using Google Analytics.

2.Key Metrics forOld and New Sites

Google Analytics has been used to measure traffic at the IMCA’s websites since 4th August 2009. This period can be divided between the old and new sites as follows:

Old site: from 4th August 2009 to 29th January 2011

New site: from 8th February 2011 to 24th September 2011.

The following table presents key metrics for the new site alongside data for the old site.

Variable / Old Site / New Site / Comments
Visits/month / 625 / 756 / 21% improvement by new site
Pageviews/month / 3133 / 4293 / 37% improvement by new site
Pages/visit / 4.32 / 5.34 / 24% improvement by new site
Time on site (min) / 2:40 / 4:00 / 50% improvement by new site
Bounce rate (%) / 45 / 37 / 18% lower rate for new site
New visits (%) / 77 / 54 / 30% lower rate for new site
Absolute unique visitors/month / 560 / 541 / 3% decline for new site

This indicates that:

Traffic through the new site is about a quarter higher than the old site.
The lower bounce rate indicates that the new site is more sticky and/or attractive to visitors
The lower rate for new visits indicates that the new site has more returning visitors and 3% fewer new visitors.

Drilling down into the country of originof visitors reveals the following patterns:

Country of Origin / % Visits to Old Site / % Visits to New Site
Ireland / 66 / 81
UK / 10 / 6
USA / 5 / 3
Other / 21 / 10
Total / 100 / 100

This shows that the new site has been much more effective in attracting Irish visitors than the old site. If the overall Absolute unique visitors/ month(previous table) is adjusted to reflect Irish visitors only, the adjusted values are 370 per month for the old site and 438 per month for the new site.

Based on the foregoing analysis, the new site has attracted significantly more Irish visitors who have stayed longer on the site and viewed more pages.

3.Other Visitor Statistics

Thenext table compares key statistics for the new site for new and returning visitors.

Variable / New Visitors / Returning Visitors / Total
Visits / 58% / 42% / 100%
Pageviews / 50% / 50% / 100%
Time on site / 40% / 60% / 100%
Bounces / 62% / 38% / 100%

This indicates that almost half of all visitors are returning visitors and that they spend considerably more time on the site than new visitors.

Other interesting visitor-related statistics for the new site include:

46% of visitors used IE, 25% used Foxfire and 20% used Chrome browsers.
88% used Windows and 7% used the Mac operating system.
Just 4% of visits were made via a mobile device.

4.Traffic Sources

The following table summarises traffic sources for the new site from 8th February 2011 to 24th September 2011.

Traffic Source / Visits / Visits (%) / Trend
Direct / 1589 / 28 / 344 in March vs. 166 in August
Referring / 1075 / 19 / Flat at 180 per month
Search / 3061 / 53 / Flat at 370 per month
Total / 5725 / 100 / After peaking at 900 visits per month, the rate has stabilised at about 775 visits per month

The three sources are reviewed below.

4.1.Direct Traffic

The downturn in direct traffic since March 2011 reflects extra traffic generated by testing and development immediately following the site’s launch.

4.2.Referral Traffic

The main sources of referral traffic (1075 visits) were as follows:

LinkedIn – 236 visits
Corporate Governance Association of Ireland –155 visits
International Council of Management Consulting Organisations – 50 visits
118 other sources accounted for the remaining 634 referred visits including:
Twitter and Facebook for 2 and 13 visits respectively.
Member sites for about 20 visits.

4.3.Search Traffic

The main sources of search traffic (3061 visits) were as follows:

Google – 2940 visits
Bing – 56 visits
Yahoo – 34 visits.

The following table identifies the top search terms.

Search Terms / Visits / % Visits
Imca / 626 / 20
Institute of management consultants / 113 / 4
Management consultants ireland / 93 / 3
Imca Ireland / 73 / 2
Management themes / 68 / 2
Institute of management consultants and advisers / 65 / 2
Imca.ie / 57 / 2
Management consultancy / 47 / 2
Irish management consultants / 40 / 1
Consulting ireland / 36 / 1
All other terms (995) / 1916 / 63
Total terms / 3061 / 100

The “All other terms” included variations on the Institute’s name; different combinations of the terms consultant and adviser; and names of Institute members and their firms. Approximately 780 search termswere not duplicated.

5.Content Popularity

Based on page titles, the top ten pages viewed were as follows:

Page Title / Pageviews / % Total Pageviews
Home page / 7707 / 24
Consulting Practice Search(Included 1789 Quick Searches fromhome page) / 2364 / 7
Find a Consultant / 1484 / 5
Member Profile(Comprised look ups of 151 different profile searches by members and non-members) / 1278 / 4
Individual Member / 1046 / 3
Apply for Membership (Included 116 visits to Graduate membership page and 34 to Practice membership page) / 723 / 2
Please log in (to Members’ Area) / 685 / 2
Annual Affirmation (Included 307 page visits within members’ area) / 650 / 2
Become a Member / 643 / 2
All Member Search – Members Area (Comprised 265 visits to the search page and 351 searches) / 616 / 2
All other pages (150) / 14290 / 45
Totals / 31486 / 100

Excluding home page traffic, the other nine most popular pages could be classified as follows:

Consultant searches (3848)
Membership related (2412)
Members’ actions (1951)

6.Navigation

The following table summariseshow often the five public menus on the site’s homepage were clicked. The two most popular items within each menu are highlighted.

Main Menu / Menu Item / Page Views
Using a Consultant / Using Consultants / 108 / 573
Appointing Consultants / 22
Find a Consultant / 284*
Client Enquiry Service / 8
Practice Directories / 22
Membership Validation / 68
Code of Conduct / 20
10 Golden Rules / 41
Become a Member / Become a Member / 211 / 910
Benefits of Membership / 79
Individual Member / 280*
Practice Member / 126*
Graduate Member / 107
Subscription Rates / 37
Annual Affirmation / 70
E-Library / E-Library / 47 / 156
Management Themes / 44
Market Research / 23
Member Resources / 28
Useful Links / 14
Groups / Groups / 42 / 164
ICAG / 18
IMCA Munster / 52
Working Groups / 52
About Us / About Us / 164 / 405
Officers and Board / 89
Institute History / 7
Our Ethos / 9
News and Events / n/a
Contact Us / 136

* Includes clicks via inline links in “Find a Consultant” and “Become a Member” boxes on the home page.

This table highlights the importance of the ‘find a consultant’ facility and interest in membership-related items, and relatively poor performance of the E-library.

7.Landing Pages

The following table lists the top ten initial landing pages.

Landing Page / Entrances / % Total Entrances / Bounce Rate (%)
Home page / 3834 / 67 / 28
Munster Events / 122 / 2 / 70
E-library Management Themes / 105 / 2 / 87
Benefits of Membership / 92 / 2 / 83
External Events / 68 / 1 / 61
Become an Individual Member / 59 / 1 / 49
Medal Breakfast Event / 57 / 1 / 61
Officers and Board / 56 / 1 / 55
Corporate Governance Event / 53 / 1 / 49
Event Photos / 51 / 1 / 63
Other Landing Pages (260) / 1228 / 21 / 39
Total Landing Pages / 5725 / 100 / 39

This demonstrates the importance of the home page (3834 entrances) and of “event-related” landings (351) which would be often prompted by emails to members.

8.Possible Further Actions

Based mainly on the foregoing review, the following actions (in no particular order) might be taken to further increase the site’s traffic and effectiveness:

Set up Goals within Google Analytics to measure key outputs e.g. searches, applications, enquiries etc.
Monitor deliverables via the website and over all e.g. percentages of membership applications received on- and off-line.
Tie back email performance reports to website traffic to monitor effectiveness.
Change E-Library to “Free Resources” or similar to increase its appeal to visitors.
Encourage more members to link to the site.
Experiment with and extend the range of material provided by members to the E-library.
Set up links for Twitter and Facebook and experiment with their use.
Seek more inbound links from other relevant sites, search engines and directories.
Review and extend the range of Meta titles and descriptions to broaden and deepen the relevance of pages to search engines.
Promote greater use by members of the search facilities, forum etc.
Extend content to include members’ blogs and news items.
Increase frequency of newsletters to members.
Encourage use by members of the site’s RSS feed to keep up-to-date on site developments.
Ensure members’ and practices’ profiles are comprehensive and current.

Brian Flanagan
PlanWare

2nd October 2011