SHERPA’S WEBSITE TRAFFIC

CASE STUDY

SHERPA’S WEBSITE TRAFFIC A SNAPSHOT OF BEFORE & AFTER

Sherpa Marketing recently launched its

new website. Launching a new website

can be both an exciting and daunting

endeavor. It requires an investment of

time which involves careful planning to

minimize problems when the site is

finally live.

As with all websites Sherpa develops,

countless hours were spent conducting

usability tests to evaluate how the site

would perform in a user environment.

Usability testing is an essential part of

quality assurance and a true test of how

site visitors would use the site.

contact us

204.219.8838 519.576.0895 sherpamarketing.ca

205-530 kenaston blvd winnipeg, manitoba

17-645 westmount rd e.kitchener, ontario

marketing

FROM OLD TO NEW

After satisfying the requirements to

ensure that the site would look and act as

was intended, Sherpa launched its newly

designed website in February, 2015.

PRE-LAUNCH STATS6 MONTHS POST LAUNCH

Unique users 1,596

Sessions 1,816

Session Duration 1:20

Page views 4,607

Months before the new website was

launched, traffic to the website had begun

to plateau. The overall traffic sessions for

the six month period before the launch

(Sept 27, 2014 - February 19, 2015) were

1,816. There were 1,596 unique users and

4,607 page views. In addition, the average

session duration pre-launch was 01:20.

CHALLENGE Pre-launch

The marketing challenge was to create

a mobile responsive, aesthetically

pleasing website that reflected the

Sherpa brand identity and that would

establish Sherpa as a trusted expert

in website development and creative

design. Featuring tons of new features

like parallax design and responsive CSS,

the brand new site was intended to

capture the essence of who and what

Sherpa is, changing the focus from the

former abstract mountaineering theme

to a more direct focus on the people that

work at Sherpa.

CHALLENGE Continued

Reviewing year-over-year traffic to the

Sherpa website in 2013 versus 2014, there

was a 12% increase in sessions and a 34%

increase in users. While there was an

increase in visits to the site, we noticed

significant decrease in page views, pages

per session, average session duration and

an increased bounce rate.

In terms of setting actionable goals, some

of the goals and events that were to be

measured within Google Analytics were

intended to track the stickiness of the site

by reviewing metrics such as the average

time spent on the site and to see more

page views. Having established our own

extensive content marketing plan, one of

our specific goals was to see interaction

with social media icons on the website.

SOLUTION Launch

To increase the newly launched website’s

visibility we notified clients, prospects,

influencers and vendors through all social

media channels as well as through a blast

email. We promoted a post about the new

launch on LinkedIn which received over

500 impressions from both organic and

sponsored posts, with a 2.21% engagement

rate on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great

networking tool and good for publishing

content relevant to your professional

network; however, we used this platform

as a promotion tool to spread the word

about our newly launched website to our

client base and extended network.

During the week of the initial launch as well

as the week post launch, we saw a 74%

increase in sessions and a 64% increase in

users. Page views soared by 165% and pages

per session increased by 52%. On an average,

session duration was 4:39. How long visitors

stay on a website has been considered a key

indication of how successful that site is in

attracting relevant visitors.

““During the week of the initial launch as well as the week post launch, we saw a 74% increase in sessions and a 64% increase in users. Page

views soared by 165% and pages per session increased by 52%”

With internet users snacking on and

skimming content online, the new website

was designed to be visually palatable

and easy to skim through. By using

beautiful pictures and having short but

punchy headlines and news content,

the new website very easily appealed to

our audience, making them stay 4 times

longer on the new site.

OUTCOME Post-launch

Due to increased promotion of the new

site, we noticed a peak in traffic volumes

around March 17th, about a month after

the launch. Sessions and users increased

significantly, which can be attributed to

social media activity. The larger peak

that occurred near the end of the launch

month could again be explained as

excitement surrounding the new site.

POST-LAUNCH STATS6 MONTHS POST LAUNCH

Unique users 3,742

Sessions 4,566

Session Duration 1:49

Page views 11,015

OUTCOME Continued

Comparing similar time periods in May

2014 versus 2015, we saw more than twice

the number of sessions and users on the

website in 2015. In addition, we compared

6 months pre-launch (Sept 2014 -

Feb 2015) and 6 months post launch

(Feb 2015 - July 2015) and saw a 151%

increase in sessions,

133% increase in users and a 36% increase

in average session duration. However,

pages per session dropped. This could be

due to excitement surrounding the new

site, with visitors navigating the site to

admire the graphics and design and

not necessarily staying on it to explore

the content.

In terms of devices, we combined data

from tablets and mobile and classified

both as mobile. We noticed that more than

80% of visitors came to the site from a

desktop device and generally spent more

time on the site. Interestingly, looking at

engagement, visitors who came from a

mobile device viewed more pages per

session than those who came from

a desktop.

With the optimal viewing and interaction

experience provided by the responsive

design, visitors’ screens were adapted to

the device they used to visit the website.

After the new site was launched, returning

visitors spent more than twice the average

session duration time – potentially clients

wanting to explore what had been

changed on the Sherpa site.

The 25 - 34 age group had the most

sessions on the website. This demographic

breakdown of the data showed an age

distribution similar to those of the Account

Managers who shared posts about the

website launch across their social

media platforms to their friends and

social community.

NOTES

marketing