Seriously. Facebook gets as much traffic as Google. Despite this, people don’t really like it. One survey found that user satisfaction with Facebook was on par with the IRS or airlines. That’s pretty bad.

Here’s the good news: You can succeed on Facebook, no matter how much you dislike it. I’m referring to success in a business sense, of course. I’m sure you can find some help elsewhere if you’re worried about succeeding socially.

First off, let’s be clear about your objective on Facebook. Bring in more money? No. That comes later. To succeed on Facebook, your goal has to be to build an engaged community with a common interest.

People aren’t on Facebook to be sold things. There isn’t usually commercial intent with a Facebook user. There’s social intent. Engage with your audience socially and they’ll be more likely to remember you when they do have commercial intent.

So, you know your objective. How do you get there? If you want to skip to the advanced stuff, scroll down the the Sponsored Stories header below.

First, you need a Facebook Page for yourself or your organization. That part’s easy.

Next, you need to put content out there. Remember, you’re not selling. You’re connecting. Share useful articles, fun pictures, interesting videos, or news items that will interest your target audience.

How much to post and how often varies. You’ll have to experiment, and don’t be afraid to ask your fans if they’d like to hear from you more or less.

Now you’ve built it. They’ll come, right? Wrong. Your Facebook page is not a Field of Dreams. It needs to be promoted just like any other web property.

Here are a few ways to start promoting your page:

1. Put a link on your website — visitors to your site are hopefully in your target audience.
2. Share the page with your personal Facebook friends — they may not be your target audience, but you need some “likes” to get started.
3. Post viral content that people will want to share with their friends
4. Buy some “likes” if need be — don’t count on these being useful connections, but they can help get a new page off the ground.
5. Display QR codes at your physical location or at events
6. Run a Facebook Ad
7. Run a Sponsored Story

Numbers 6 and 7 will mean giving Facebook some money, but they are also the most effective ways of promoting your page. Sponsored stories are particularly potent, though widely misunderstood.

Since regular ads are fairly self explanatory, let’s jump right into Sponsored Stories.

Sponsored Stories

[Note: The interface for setting up sponsored stories was changed between the time this post showed up in my email newsletter and when it was posted here. It all works the same, but the interface has been rearranged.]

If you’re like I was, you’re thinking, “but I don’t have a story worth promoting.” Forget what you know as a story. Facebook has co-opted the word and is using it to describe something else. (Have you noticed they have a habit of doing that sort of thing? Ugh.)

There are a few kinds of Sponsored stories. I’m going to focus on just one of them, Page Like Stories.

My friends might see an ad like this.

They are ads that come with social endorsement. Everyone has developed some ad-blindness these days. Our eyes are hard to catch. Show us a picture of a friend and we’ll look. That’s what makes these sponsored stories so powerful.

It gets even better, though. Not only are you targeting people who are one degree of separation from being a fan already, but you can further narrow down your targeting by interest. How about an example?

You run a business in lovely Chapel Hill, North Carolina. You sell lots and lots of UNC gear — jerseys, bumper stickers, sky blue face paint, that sort of thing. You can run a Page Like Story to expose your Page to the friends of your current fans. Lots of them are probably in and around Chapel Hill, so that’s great. But, as anyone familiar with this area knows, there are other schools that people like… and they tend to feel quite strongly about this. A Duke fan will never like your page, even if they happen to have a friend who does. So, you target your Page Like Story to people interested in UNC, Tarheels, The Daily Tarheel, and anything else that makes sense. Now your Page Like Story will only appear to friends of fans who actually like UNC.

Can’t You Just Get Your Fans to Spread the Word

Once upon a time, Facebook would expose your page to people every time one of their friends liked something you posted. No longer. They are trying to monetize now, as they stare down the barrel of an IPO.

Around November 1, 2011, Facebook Pages started getting more paid impressions than organic impressions. It was the other way around for a long time prior. Now they show more ads and make it harder for you to get organic impressions. It will probably get worse, too.

Advertising on Facebook is pretty affordable, though. It’s also pretty easy to get up and running with it.

Just remember to Always Run Tests and make Data Driven Decisions.

Imagine what Bach would do with an electric guitar... it would probably sound a lot like Van Halen.

Ninety years ago a book was being written by a man named Claude Hopkins. That book would reveal an advertising secret that revolutionized the industry. It was called Scientific Advertising and it’s been a “must read” ever since.

And, it’s even more useful today, online.

There are two components to this method, and I have a pair of acronyms to help you remember them.

ART – Always Run Tests.

3D – Data Driven Decisions.

Let’s dive in to these old concepts and see how they can drastically improve the performance of your marketing campaigns today.

Always Run Tests

What do I mean by “run tests?” I’m talking about showing two different ads at the same time, or running two versions of your website.

People tend to put something up on their website, or write an online ad and just let it sit there. Then they’ll try to improve it by making some changes and letting those sit for awhile. This is a tough way to learn what really works — you’ll never know if your sales changed because of the changes you made or the change in season.

Split testing and multivariate testing are the solution to this problem. You test multiple messages at the same time. You can do this on the web and it’s not too hard. In fact, if you’re advertising with Google Adwords or on Facebook, it’s really easy. All you have to do is make two ads.

In Facebook you’ll make two Campaigns. Keep the targeting the same and change the ad text or image. Or you can keep the ad the same but change the targeting. Either way, only make one change between the campaigns. Watch the data, and when you have a winner just retire the other campaign and make a new test.

The same goes for Adwords, but you’ll make two ads within the same Ad Group. Change something in one of the ads and the data will tell you what works best.

In online ads you might try testing:

• the wording of your headline
• your call to action
• different kinds of punctuation
• capitalizing the first letter of each word

You can run tests on your site, too. The easiest way is to use the Google Website Optimizer. You’ll make two versions of a page and the tool will give you some code to paste into each one. Then you’ll add a bit of code to the page visitors land on after conversion (e.g. the “Thank You” page or Receipt page.)

The tool will show your visitors one version or the other and track the conversion rate for each one. When a winner has been discovered you’ll be notified and it’s time to make a new test.

By Always Running Tests you’ll ensure that your online marketing is constantly improving, step by step, bit by bit. That’s what matters. Whenever you’re running tests you’re improving your return on marketing investment. If you want to always improve your ROI, you should Always Run Tests — A.R.T.

Data Driven Decisions

A test will give you empirical data and it’s up to you to make sure your decisions are based on good data. In the case of advertisement and website tests, you’ll have click rate data for your ads and Website Optimizer will track conversions on your site.

You should also have Google Analytics running.

The best data to make decisions on is full conversions: which version got more sales / donations / sign ups? If you don’t have a good way to measure that, you should get to work fixing that. In the mean time, make testing decisions on what data you do have.

It’s not just finding the right metric that counts, but gathering enough data points. This is easy to illustrate.

If I flip a coin 5 times I might get heads 3 times and tails twice. Based on that data, I could say that a coin will land on heads 60% of the time. That’d be wrong, of course. I’d never make a profit spending my time placing bets on coins landing heads up.

So, don’t go running an ad just because it made 2 more sales than another.

Statisticians have a formula for figuring out how much data is enough. You don’t need to know the equation, though. You can use a calculator or one of Google’s tools that takes care of the math for you. You can do a search for [split test calculator] or check out this one.

Aim for a confidence of 95% or better. If you aren’t getting a ton of traffic you might have to settle for less, but the higher the confidence score the more likely your data is meaningful. If you aren’t getting a good confidence score, drop the newer version and test something else. Don’t retire a winner without good data to back up that decision.

As you may have guessed by now, more traffic means better testing. The amount of data you gather is like a multiplier for this whole process.

More traffic will:

• make each improvement even more profitable
• let you discover winners faster
• allow you to run more tests at the same time
• give you an advantage over competitors who can’t test as efficiently as you

And your traffic will grow as long as you make Data Driven Decisions — 3D.

So get to testing! If it’s all too overwhelming, just start small. Run one test in your pay per click ads. Expand from there to all your campaigns. Then you can work with Google Website Optimizer to start running tests on your site.

OK, Hopkins probably didn't use an abacus. He would have had access to a mechanical calculator like this one from 1914. But, you've got the power of millions of those in your phone. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comptometer#Model_E

It’s going to be way easier for you than it was for Claude Hopkins’ readers back in the 1920′s. They had to print up two mailings and divide up their list of addresses by hand. After paying for postage they had to count responses for each version using an abacus or some such ancient tool.

You’ve got it easy: calculators, spreadsheets, ads that can be deployed in seconds, and analytics that would make Hopkins faint.

Of course, you might prefer to hire someone to help with all this. In fact, tests are a big part of what I do for my clients with a monthly marketing plan.

Leave a comment below with your tips, experiences or questions about split testing online. What kind of results have you gotten, or what obstacles have you faced?

A website basically has three components. There’s the domain name, the server and the content. Users type in your domain name and a server sends them your content. Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

Domain Names
A domain name is just that, a name. It’s your www-dot-com. It can include letters, numbers and hyphens. The domain name points to your server by use of Domain Name Servers or DNS. Your name is just an easy to remember shortcut for your server’s internet address.

You can pick what suffix you’d like from the usual options, .com, .org, .net, etc. That suffix is called the Top Level Domain or TLD. There are new TLDs coming out regularly, but I suggest sticking to the three just mentioned. Those have the most recognition. Just like it’s better to have a 1-800 number than a 1-866 number, a dot com address is easiest for people to remember.

Domain names are available from lots of places at lots of prices. I’d say you shouldn’t pay much more than $10 per year. There are places that charge as much as $40 per year, but there’s absolutely no difference. It’s just your name.

Web Servers or Hosting
A web server is a computer that’s accessible over a network, in this case over the internet. It handles requests from people who have typed in your domain name or clicked on a link to your site and sends them your content.

You could use your own computer, but then you’d have to worry about all the configuration and such. Instead, you can get a web hosting company to do all the dirty work for you. They’ll keep an eye on things and make backups regularly so you don’t have to worry about that stuff.

Web hosting comes in a wide range of prices, from $2.99 per month to $999 per month and more. For most websites, you don’t need to spend more than $10 per month. I use Dreamhost at $8.95 per month and recommend them to all my clients. If you’re paying much more than that, you should probably be shopping for new web hosting. (I’m assuming you run a small business website.) For less than that you might not get very reliable service.

Save $50 at DreamHost with promo code “GRANDSTAFF”

Content
Content is where you should be investing your effort and money. This is what visitors will see and interact with when they come to your website. When visitors come to your domain name, the server will send them your content. The better your content, the more visitors will engage with you.

The Bottom Line
So, that’s what you need to get a website up and running. You’ll need a name so people can find you. You’ll need web hosting so your name can lead to something. And, you’ll need content to give visitors the info they’re looking for.

For your domain name and hosting, don’t spend more than $150 per year. If you’re getting tens of thousands of visits per month you might need more, but 90% of websites don’t need to spend more than that. Save your money for making great content, as that’s what will make the most difference on your bottom line.

Quick Response Codes!
Usually these are called QR Codes, and they’re just a type of bar code. Unlike most bar codes you see, these can store a fair amount of information, topping out at about 3000 characters. And, any smartphone with a camera can decode that data.

There are a few types of things that are commonly stored in these codes.

• Website links
• Contact info (vCards)
• Event info (to import into a calendar)
• Text message links
• Plain text

They’re easy to create and don’t take up much space. You can make your own at http://www.qrstuff.com/ It will take you seconds and create an image you can use in printed materials or online. If you want a larger one, you might try http://goqr.me/

They’re easy to scan; you just use the phone’s camera. If you have an app that scans product bar codes to check prices online, it should handle QR Codes too. Also, many Android phones come with Google Goggles installed, which reads QR Codes in addition to doing visual searches. There are plenty of dedicated apps too. Just search your app store for “qr code.”

For example, this QR Code stores a link to my Twitter profile. If you have a smartphone, just fire up a barcode scanning app and point it at this image. You’ll be shown the link and be able to go right to the website with zero typing.

You can put those on any type of printed marketing materials to make it easy for people to connect with your online presence. You could also use them in store to take people to detailed product pages, or at the point of sale.

This code has my vCard in it. Give it a scan and you can add me to your contacts instantly. Now that saves some typing! Why not include a QR vCard on your business card?

As I understand it, not everyone in America knows what these are. In Japan, everyone knows. In Europe most people know. Here, it wouldn’t hurt to include some instructions. Something like, “Scan this with your favorite smartphone bar code app to visit our website.”

There are countless possible uses for these codes. Here are a few more ideas to get you started:

• Put a link to your Facebook page at your point of sale and offer a small discount to anyone who “Likes” you on the spot.
• Use a QR Code to reveal a promo code that people can redeem
• Put one on your website so people can open it on their phone without doing any typing.
• Print up some QR Code stickers and create a virtual scavenger hunt with each code containing a clue for finding the next one.

At the very least, I suggest putting a vCard QR Code on your business cards and one linking to your website on any fliers or posters.

You can also get a bit fancy if you like. If you understand how they work you can alter a code to include your logo, like so:

If you’d like help integrating QR Codes or other forms of mobile marketing into your efforts, drop me a line. I’d be happy to help out or point you in the right direction if I’m not the right person for the job.

The plan includes removing keywords from “referer” data. Read on to learn what referer data is, why I’m misspelling that word, and what Google is changing.

When you visit a webpage, your computer sends various bits of information along to that webpage that you never see. These are called headers. One of the headers is the referer. The referer header tells the site you are visiting where you came from. When you click a link your browser tells the page you land on the address of the page you came from.

The reason it gets spelled “referer” instead of “referrer” is that this misspelling was included in the original specifications for the web, back in 1996. I think it’s a fun bit of internet trivia, but I’ll go back to spelling the word correctly now.

Now, when you do a search on Google or other search engines, the words you search for are included in the address. For example, a Google search for [how to play chess] would take you to an address like:

http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+play+chess

That’s a nice way to do it because then people can link to specific searches. Also, when you click a link after searching, the site you visit is told the address you came from in the referrer header. That lets site owners track what search terms brought people to their website.

That seems harmless enough, but consider another example. Say someone in Syria or Iran were to search for [how to topple an autocratic regime]. Suddenly this whole situation gets serious. That kind of search could get them arrested, or worse.

And, it’s not just the site you visit that can see your searches. Your internet provider can too. Here in the US, our providers snoop into our traffic to mine data that’s sold to advertisers and such. In countries with dictatorial leaders… well, you can imagine.

So, Google is rolling out encryption on searches. Soon, anyone who is logged into a Google account and does a search from the main Google page will have their searches automatically encrypted. This is really great for privacy. They will also be removing all referrer data when you click a search result. Again, good for privacy, but webmasters won’t be able to see what search terms brought traffic to their site.

This has the SEO community up in arms. (Well, this and another little tidbit to be discussed below.) We pay a lot of attention to the keywords that are bringing in traffic. That’s one of the best metrics we have to judge the success of our efforts.

Personally, I’m okay with trading keyword data for better privacy. I believe that the more encryption is used on the web the better. Here’s the kicker, though: Google will pass your search terms on when you click one of their ads.

That’s right, they will protect your privacy unless someone pays them not to. In fact, they’ll be going out of their way to share your search data with advertisers. Normally, when you’re on an encrypted page and click a link to a non-encrypted page your browser will not pass any referrer data. Google will actually be rigging things such that you will send referrer data to advertisers.

All the keyword data isn’t going to just go away. Probably less than 10% of searches will get encrypted this way. If you have a website, be sure you’re making use of this data. You can find the report in Google Analytics under Content » Keywords. In the long term, we might have to look for other metrics. Time will tell.

This post first appeared in my small business email newsletter’s Halloween edition. Sign up with the form at the upper left to get a useful article in your inbox each month.

Often times when someone searches for a local business, or category of businesses, Google will show a “7 Box” of local results along with a map. The normal results generally come after this. For example, here’s what I found after searching for [chapel hill coffee].

If you click on the name of the business you will go to their website. To the right of the name is a tally of reviews and “Place page.” That’s a link to their profile in Google Places.

The Place page is a collection of all sorts of data that Google has collected from around the web like reviews, hours of operation, and pictures. The more information Google can find on the web about a business, the more authoritative that business is, thus bringing it higher in those local search results. In local search, mentioning a business, it’s address and telephone number is like a vote of confidence in that business, just like links are for websites in normal search results.

You’re not at the mercy of what Google can find about you, though. Business owners can claim their listing and manually add content. The more content you add, the more Google likes you. So, get out there and claim your listing, and add as much to it as possible. Do a Google search for your business name and city or find yourself on Google Maps to get to your place page. Then, just click the link at the top right that says “Business owner?”

To prove yourself, Google will call the phone number associated with your listing and have you enter a code. It only takes a few minutes. Plus, once you’ve claimed your listing you’ll be able to see statistics about how often your listing shows up for searchers and how they interact with it.

One caveat: These listings are non-transferable. So, don’t have an employee claim your listing while signed in with their personal Google or Gmail account. Generally, the easiest thing to do is create a new Google account to use for the business, and claim the listing with that account.

I’ve put together these 7 rules from a few different sources: Hemingway, Orwell and Bird. If you ask me, it’s worth brushing up on these sorts of things periodically. I should probably do it more often.

Use short sentences.
Hemingway was a master of this rule. He learned it from a newspaper’s style book. Short sentences make your writing easy to digest. That’s very important in our fast paced world.

Eight words make for an easy sentence. Sixteen words is okay. Thirty two is too much. Your reader may lose track and lose interest.

Use short paragraphs.
Nothing deters a reader like a wall of text. Break up your ideas into easy to digest chunks, and don’t make every paragraph the same length.

Break up your text.
There are a number of ways to make your text less intimidating beyond short sentences and paragraphs. For example,

• Bulleted lists
• Headlines and sub-headlines
• Images
• Bold or italic type

Be positive.
That doesn’t mean to always be happy. It means describe what something is rather than what it is not. Call something affordable rather than inexpensive. That produce is organic rather than pesticide free.

You can compare your offerings to your competitors and still be positive. Just talk about what your offering is rather than what theirs is not. For example, “Acme widgets are 32% stronger than Brand X widgets.”

Use the active voice.
This one will keep your sentences shorter and more potent. You wouldn’t say, “the championship was won by us” would you? No. You’d say, “we won the championship.”

Draw the reader along.
Make it easy for your reader to keep reading to the end.

Build curiosity. Don’t give everything away in a headline. Use curiosity to draw your reader along. What else?

Questions help. You can bridge two paragraphs by ending one with a question. Naturally the reader will go to the next for the answer.

Additionally, you can use carrier words. At the start of a sentence, these tell the reader that there’s something more to get. Examples include, furthermore, plus, also, finally, next and and. (It’s okay to start a sentence with and. You aren’t writing a term paper.)

Stay lucid.
What this all boils down to is clarity. Your writing should make sense and have a logical flow.

A good test is to ask a layperson to read your writing. Ask them if it’s clear. If not, revise.

Finally, I don’t know who said this, but here’s a quotation to keep in mind:

“Something written to please the writer rarely pleases the reader.”

When Google first opened their search engine in the late 1990′s it revolutionized the way people found information online. Google came along with a way to show the best results at the top of search results. PageRank (a trademark of Google) is what made this possible. Understanding how it works is vital if you want to make your site show up higher in search engines.

PageRank is a numerical score. The higher the PageRank, the more important and authoritative the web page. It’s assigned to every page that Google indexes. Basically, PageRank is the likelihood that someone clicking links at random will visit a particular page.

Google uses PageRank to figure out what results to show first. It figures out what pages are most relevant to the phrase that was searched for. Then, it filters and sorts those results based on PageRank.

PageRank is calculated by looking at all the links pointing to a given web page. Each link is like a vote of confidence from a third party.

The amount of PageRank gained from a link depends primarily on two things:

• The PageRank of the page the link is on (The authority of the third party)
• The number of links on that page (How discriminating the third party is with their votes.)

Think of PageRank as a liquid– link juice. The higher the PageRank of a page, the more juice it has to spread around. Links are like pipes that share that link juice to other pages. The number of links determines how much juice gets shared with each linked page.

For example, if The White House linked to you from their home page, Google would see you as being very, very important. The White House doesn’t have any links to other websites on their home page, and that page has one of the highest PageRanks around.

If you got a link from some deep page on a no-name site with hundreds of other external links on it, it would do next to nothing for you.

In recent years, Google has gotten more sophisticated in how PageRank gets calculated. Links at the bottom of a page pass less juice than links in the middle of the body text. Also, links found on every page of a site (Run-of-the-Site Links) don’t count for much.

That’s what’s important to understand. Every link is not created equal.

What’s not important is getting caught up on your actual PageRank score. Google won’t tell you the exact score, but they’ll give you a rounded off estimate that’s a few months old if you install their toolbar. That doesn’t do you a lot of good, and PageRank doesn’t take relevance into account anyhow.

What you should keep an eye on is where you show up in actual search results. Go to Google and search for what you offer. Where you show up is what matters, and getting good links can help you move up.

Google sometimes personalizes results based on your past search behavior. If you’re seeing a customized page of results, there will be a link at the bottom of the page labeled “View Customizations.” Click that, and then click the “without these improvements” link to see the raw results.

If you see this link, Google is personalizing the results.

If you want a more exact explanation of PageRank, you can always read the patents that have been filed.

Note that there are also links that don’t pass any juice. If, in the source code of a webpage, a link has the attribute rel=”nofollow” then Google will not transfer any PageRank juice through that link. It’s still good to have those links pointing at your site because people can click them to get to your site and search engines may still use them as clues to the subject of your site.

I’ve tried to make this as simple as possible, but it’s a complicated subject. If you have a question or know something I left out, leave a comment below!

You can go on and on about how great you are and all the benefits people get when they do business with you, but it’s still just you talking. You’re biased, and people know it… “Of course they say it’s the best thing since sliced bread, they came up with it!”

When a third party talks about how great you are, it’s completely different. They don’t profit when you make a sale. Yet, they took the time to write a few words expressing their satisfaction. A visitor to your site can read some testimonials and feel reassured that real people have gotten real benefit from doing business with you.

Of course, since the testimonial is on your website you could have written it yourself or edited it heavily. In fact, a lot of people do write the testimonials themselves and ask clients to sign off on it as if they had written it. Don’t do that. Your testimonials will all sound the same and people will not be swayed by the words.

Your testimonials must be authentic, and there’s a few basic things you can do to make sure they come across as the words of real, three-dimensional human beings:

• Get people to write their own testimonials. The main reason I hear why people write testimonials for their customers or clients is that they asked for testimonials and never got them. It’s not because people don’t want to write them or don’t have time. It’s because they don’t know what to say.

  When you ask someone for a testimonial, give them some guidance. Ask them what benefits they received from buying your products or services. Ask them what they would tell a close friend who was considering buying your products or services. Whatever you do, don’t just say, “Can you send me a testimonial?”

  Everyone has their own voice and that’s the single most important thing to capture in order to make your testimonials authentic. The varying tone and voice in your testimonials will make everything believable to the reader.

• Give attributions for each testimonial. Real people have names, occupations, and live in specific places. Provide that info along with the testimonial!

  Nothing says unauthentic like testimonials without names. Granted, some industries shouldn’t give out names for confidentiality reasons, but whenever possible provide a name.

  If you serve a wide geographic region you can show that off by listing the location with each testimonial. This will reassure readers that you’re a match for them even if they live further away from your home base. Additionally, it adds another layer of authenticity.

  Listing the occupation of your testimonial’s author is another way to show visitors they’re in the right place, that what you offer can help them. This is especially useful in the business to business market. It lets you demonstrate that you either serve a wide range of industries or have a specific niche that you focus on.

• Got pictures? Use them! Reading words and names is one thing. Seeing someone’s face is another. If feasible, provide a picture along with each testimonial. Outside of video, nothing will make your testimonials more three dimensional than a picture.

Remember to capture and showcase the unique voice and identity that goes with each testimonial. Your visitors will recognize the authenticity and be reassured by the third party validation.

Of course, testimonials aren’t as powerful as reviews in third party websites or publications, or word of mouth. They are a powerful sales tool, though. I suggest having a section of your website devoted to showing them off, and using them any place where a visitors will be making a decision on whether to do business with you or not.

You'll find In-Page Analysis under the Content section.

When you click the In-Page Analysis link you’ll be taken to a page that shows your website within Google Analytics. You’ll have a column on the left with lots of handy stats for the page you’re looking at. Even better, you’ll see a little bubble by every link on your site showing what percentage of clicks were on that link.

When you first start this feature up you’ll see your site’s homepage. Look at the link stats. Since every website is different and has different objectives it’s hard to give universal advice about what your numbers should ideally look like. Think about what path you want visitors to take through your site and see if the numbers match your ideal. If not, make a note of the issue.

After you look at the homepage, click one of your links and have a look at the next page. Consider where you’d like visitors to go after that page and see if your click statistics match up. While you explore, pay attention to the Entrance and Exit percentages in the left column as well. A high exit percentage on your Contact page is normal. On your homepage, it’s a problem.

You can explore your whole site this way, and I suggest you do. It never fails to amaze me how quickly I can find actionable information this way.

I expect Google will be improving the In-Page Analysis feature a lot as time goes on. Perhaps eventually they’ll even give us click heat maps showing exactly where clicks happen, down to the pixel. Of course, by then you’ll be a pro with this feature because you started using it religiously after reading this, right?

Note: If you have the kind of website that you log into as an administrator, you may need to log out before this feature will work correctly.