Analytics Report for Calliope - Qtr2 2023

Summary/Conclusions

Transition to GA4

As we transition to using Google Analytics 4, some slightly different terms and metrics may take a bit of getting used to. In particular, users are counted differently as discussed on the Traffic Sources page. Another example is Bounce Rate which isn’t used in GA4, instead it refers to Engagement Rate, which is :

The “Percentage of Engaged Sessions. Engaged Sessions is the number of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event, or had at least 2 pageviews or screenviews.”

Search Rankings, traffic volume and enquiry numbers

There have been some concerns expressed that enquiry numbers are down and that we may have lost some traction in our search rankings.

From the analytics, it’s clear that there was a drop in reported visitor numbers late last year, coinciding with mid-November. Since we launched the new site, the traffic has partly rebounded, though it’s still below what we were seeing last year. It’s difficult to tell exactly what caused this, whether it was search engine updates, changes to the Google Analytics tracking (to anonymise IP addresses) or other factors. I’ve explored some of these areas and I’m mostly coming up with answers that confound rather than confirm these theories. So the causes of this are still a mystery to me.

In general, the search rankings for the majority of our keywords seem to have been improving, not going backwards. But it’s possible that increased competition or a change in the competitiveness around target keywords is a factor.

There is a plan to work on reviewing the keywords that we target in the site’s content, to see if we can identify potential keywords that would be of greater value, in terms of generating enquiries. I.e. keywords that better match what potential clients are using when searching for interpreting services. This is something I expect we will tackle in the 3rd quarter of this year and can start targeting no later than 4th quarter.

In terms of enquiries, they appear to be lower than we’ve seen in the previous 2 years and the growth rate has dropped as shown in the table below where we’ve listed the enquiry numbers for each of the last 5 years and averaged them out per quarter.

Enquiries

Enquiries

Year

Quarterly avg

Annual total

% of previous yr

2023

TBD

58%

2022

17.25

117%

2021

14.75

179%

2020

8.25

132%

2019

6.25

139%

2018

4.5

There are no rows in this table

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20 - so far in 2023 (10 per quarter)

69 enquiries - 2022 (17.25 per quarter)

59 enquiries - 2021 (14.75 per quarter)

Apparently, there is work to be done here to improve the enquiry rate this year.

That said, when comparing how the enquiries have come through in previous years. The past 3 years have each seen higher enquiry numbers in the second half of the year. See screenshots below, which suggests to me there may be a seasonal component to this as well.

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Screen Shot 2023-07-24 at 7.10.38 PM.jpg

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Screen Shot 2023-07-24 at 7.09.41 PM.jpg

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Screen Shot 2023-07-24 at 7.08.11 PM.jpg

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