How do today’s customers consume content, and what can you be doing to improve your content engagement rate?
How do today’s users consume content?
The way we consume content today is completely different to just 10 years ago. Mobile phones are the driving force of this change. We can now connect to the internet almost anywhere and at any time via smartphones. Content is suddenly available to anyone at any time, but with a smaller window of attention span – content consumers are now skimming articles and social media posts instead of reading them properly. This means that digital content needs to be hyper-relevant to the user’s requirements, valuable and more eye catching than ever before.
With mobiles being so prolific, it’s important that a fully responsive layout can make it easier for clients to navigate the media that you are offering. Making the user experience as excellent as possible increases retention rates and encourages repeat visits – in fact, 94% of consumers say they want an easy to navigate website. https://smallbiztrends.com/2019/01/easy-website-navigation-is-important.html
Another eye-opening statistic is that 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience, while 57% of internet users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed website on mobile. So, content must be designed to be compatible no matter what device it’s being viewed on. https://www.sweor.com/firstimpressions
How can users measure content marketing success?
Device usage is just one of many factors to consider when optimising your content, so how do you prioritise the changes you make to your content? The answer to that is, of course, the analysis of user data. NOTE: For this blog, we’ll specifically be looking at web-based metrics, but there are of course many different sources of data you should be using across your full marketing stack.
Your best friend, Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an excellent source from which to collect web analytics, but it is possible to get lost if you don’t know what you’re looking for, and what you are trying to achieve. Google Analytics offers a wide range of data including page views, referral visits, demographic reports and page value. Each type of data has its merits and can be used in different ways, for example to measure interaction, the success of CTAs, or how successful a source is. Let’s look at some key metrics to measure content marketing success.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
Click Through Rate (CTR) is an important website metric to measure success because it can show the correlation between the number of clicks that your CTA receives and the number of times it has been shown. Having a high CTR helps to suggest that your users find your content/ advertising useful and relevant. You can use CTR to estimate how certain ads and keywords are successful for company and which ones need to be improved. CTR can be enhanced by using more relevant keywords and making your content as relevant to your user’s search results as possible.
Bounce Rate
When a visitor “bounces”, a user visits your website or landing page and leaves after only visiting a single page. It’s important to look at your bounce rate because it can be a clear indicator of how relevant your content is to your target audience. Having a high bounce rate suggests that your content may not be engaging or relevant enough for people coming to the page. Meaning they go straight off your page and go elsewhere. Bounce rate however is too shallow to provide any deep meaning when used on its own, so you should not heavily rely on this metric to measure the success of your online endeavours without looking at a wider context.Why is it important to measure secondary metrics?
Primary metric measures the success of content, while secondary metrics such as conversion rate, search submissions, and category pageview help you to gather information that are key to long term success. They help to gain awareness across the different stages for your marketing campaign. Secondary metrics are usually utilised to find patterns, conduct split tests and compare variations in content.
What is split testing?
Split testing is a method of conducting controlled yet randomized experiments with the end goal being to improve a specific website metric. The tester waits for a statistically substantial difference in behaviour to be uncovered. The results should show each variation compared to discover which version showed the highest development.
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