A Tale of Two Web Sites

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” Dickens penned those immortal words a century and a half ago, comparing the cities of London and Paris. These days, things are seldom that cut and dry - especially when it comes to Web Analytics. It is very difficult to compare two Web sites and get a clear picture. Take the following example: Hospital A Hospital B Visitors (July 2009)         120,000        98,000 Pageviews                     228,000       303,800 Avg. Pageviews/visit         1.9             3.1 Avg. time on site             0:58            02:43 Bounce rate                    62%             48% Which Web site would you say is “better”? Based on the limited statistics above, it is possible to make a case for either one. Hospital A has more overall traffic. However, visitors to Hospital B’s site go to view more pages and stay on the site longer. But these numbers can be deceptive. As my colleague Neal Linkon likes to point out, visitors staying on your site longer and visiting more pages could be a red flag that visitors are unable to find what they are looking for. All too often, I have found that clients looking to compare their Web sites only scratch the surface, looking only at high-level numbers like those I have posted above. While this type of visitor data is important - especially to show progress versus previous time periods - it is hardly the only place to look when evaluating the success of a hospital or health system Web site. Let’s take a closer look at these two Web sites, and perhaps these metrics will tell a clearer story: Hospital A Hospital B % Visitors searching for physician       1.2%                     5.1% % of Traffic from search                     35%                      58% # e-Newsletter sign-ups                     889                      2103 Web FTEs per 1000 user sessions       .033                     .020 Cost per visit (web budget/total visits)  $.05                    $.01 Based on these numbers, Hospital B has a clear edge over Hospital A. Hospital B has a higher percentage of its visitors completing the #1 goal of most hospital/health system Web sites (searching for a physician), and appears to be more optimized for search to attract new visitors (as indicated by the higher percentage of traffic from search).  Furthermore, B's visitors are doing more value-add activities (in this example, signing up for an e-newsletter), and Hospital B is accomplishing all of this more efficiently than Hospital A (as evidenced by the last two metrics). Evaluating a Web site is a complex equation. Overall visitor traffic metrics, while important, can be misleading and don't usually tell the full story. The best approach is one that monitors how well a Web site accomplishes the strategic goals of an organization, while keeping a close eye on important measures of efficiency. As Dickens once wrote “take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.” Great advice, in the best of times or the worst.