data/design | Fourth Edition

data /design

SUMMER 2014

TRACKING STATISTICS Key Indicators for Measuring Website Success

Cover Photography: Parker Schumacher, Travis’ son, and Ellis Pitts, Monica’s daughter, keep in-touch with Internet and marketing news

TROPICAL LIQUEURS MayeCreate D E S I G N

A Frosty Favorite

COLUMBIA FAMILY MEDICAL GROUP Providing Care to Generations of Families

MayeCreate Design

TROPICAL LIQUEURS

A Frosty Favorite

Alan Dodds (right), owner, is the face behind the trifecta of Tropical Liqueurs: delicious, daiquiri bars in Columbia and Springfield.

Twenty-nine years ago, Ira and Mary Dodds , owners of a construction company, took a trip down to Louisiana, a location famous for the love of adult beverages, especially the daiquiri. The Dodds’ quickly realized what Columbia, MO was missing: a daiquiri-focused bar.

“I’m sure the idea of owning a bar didn’t hurt their decision,” laughs Alan

Captain Morgan welcomes guests at Trops South.

Dodds, current Trops owner and son of the Trops founders.

What followed was a staple of the Columbia bar scene: Tropical Liqueurs.

Tropical Liqueurs opened in 1985 on 7th street in downtown Columbia, home of the current Snapper’s. In 1990, the 515 E. Broadway property opened up, offering more indoor space AND patio space, and has resided there ever since.

Trops offers drinks other than daiquiris.

What started as a downtown staple, Tropical Liqueurs has since spread to a second spot in South Columbia and a third in Springfield, MO. Like so many other children of business owners, Alan’s involvement with the family business started at the bottom, working his way up. He started as a waiter, later graduated to bartending and now runs the day to day operations.

“Now I spend my time in the office in front of my computer and on the phone, just like everyone else,” confesses Alan.

“But I get to meet a lot of people and the hours are flexible. That definitely comes in handy.”

Over the years, each location has grown to at least 15 drink machines and the recipe count is now over 50 concoctions.

The list continues to grow as Trops adds at least one new daiquiri flavor a year.

Sadly, Alan was not ready to divulge this year’s upcoming addition.

However, Alan did mention a new perk for Trops lovers: frosty beverages are now available seven days a week as all three locations are now open Sundays from noon until midnight.

With the Columbia and Springfield locations running like well-oiled daiquiri machines, Alan is revisiting spreading the frosty beverage happiness farther: a possible franchise in St. Louis, MO. “With three different locations,” explains Alan, “and the way I saw technology going with people and smart phones, we wanted to share our menus, locations and how to get here.”

Tropical Liqueurs was in need of a website.

Monica Pitts, Creative Director of MayeCreate Design, and Alan met in 2007 through mutual friends.

“You guys have done websites for a bunch of other business people I’m friends with,” says Alan. “They all liked what you’d done.”

MayeCreate may have been in its toddler years, but the work they were

“

I’m not the quickest person to respond but you guys have put up with me for a long time.”

- Alan Dodds, Owner

At Trops South, why not play a game of silly Jenga while enjoying a frosty beverage, beer or cocktail in a Trops original cup (available for purchase)!

putting out spoke for itself and Trops knew MayeCreate could deliver.

Alan came to the table with a simple goal: make Tropical Liqueurs’ information easily accessible. The website started out as a way for people who were heading to Trops to see what they offer and how to get to any of their locations.

MayeCreate took this direction and created a beach-themed, calming, relaxed website with easy to use navigation.

The 2trops.com navigation, illustrated with little wooden beach signs, clearly directs viewers to whatever information they are seeking. Visitors are welcome to peruse the Trops menu and specials and easily find contact and location information.

“It’s sort of been a work in progress,” Alan says. “We’ve The MayeCreate designed Tropical Liqueurs website.

recently gotten into selling items on the website as the business evolves and grows.”

By visiting the Merch page, Trops fans can purchase gift certificates and branded plastic cups and tumblers illustrating the popular white cup/red straw drinks Trops is famous for.

When asked if Alan has been pleased with MayeCreate, his response was priceless: “I’m still with you guys, so it must be a good experience!”

“I’m not the quickest person to respond,” laughs Alan. “But you guys have put up with me for a long while.”

MayeCreate’s ultimate goal is to please their clients, and just like daiquiris, they’re delightful, sweet and sometimes a little tangy.

View the full article and more images in the blog post: mayecreate.com/2014/06/trops

MayeCreate Design

MAYECREATE DESIGN: GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Key Indicators for Measuring Website 400-600 9%

200-400 17%

600-800 12%

70% of Sites 800-1000 | 2% Had Average 1000-2000 | 7% Session 2000-3000 | 4% 3000+ | 5% of Durations 3 Minutes or Less

When reviewing website traffic reports with clients we are commonly asked, “Is that normal?”

Unfortunately there’s no easy answer to that question, each business is different. However, in our craving for data, we pooled stats from one month worth of web traffic*0-200 on 169 sites we manage 44% from various industries and locations.

Our intent is to make the data available for discussion purposes or for use as rough benchmarks when reviewing your site’s data.

Here are a few key stats to use as indicators when evaluating the success of your website.

t

SESSIONS (Formerly “Visits”)

BOUNCE RATE

More Sessions are usually better from a marketing perspective; each time your site is viewed represents another opportunity for business. In April this year, Google introduced the term Sessions to replace the metric in Analytics reports formerly referred to as Visits. Each time a user interacts with your site, a Session is recorded. This tells us how many times a site was accessed in 0-200 a given period of time. Not to be confused with the number of 44% people who saw the site, this term is called Users.

The sites we monitor display a large variance of Sessions from 3 to 14,884 per month. The average is around 660 Sessions per month. Sites with smaller, local audiences generally have fewer Sessions while regional and national sites trend towards more traffic.

This metric allows you to analyze the quality of user visits.

200-400 Higher Bounce Rates can be an indicator of low quality content 17% or design usability challenges. Bounce Rate is the percentage of minthe | 6% 400-600or percentage of visits in 3-4 single page Sessions which visitor 9% 4-5 min | 5% only views one page of your website before leaving.

5+ min | 2% If your site has a high Bounce Rate, investigate the metric on 600-800 12%to uncover possible challenge areas. Bounce a page by page basis Rates are generally highest on the Home and Contact pages.

Review the keywords visitors are using to find your site. Visitors 800-1000 may be finding your site for the2%wrong reasons, resulting in a 1000-2000 bounce.

400-600 9%

t

84% of Sites Had 1,000 Sessions or Less

200-400 17%

0-200 44%

600-800 12%

<1 17

7%

2000-3000 AVERAGE SESSION DURATION (Formerly “Average Visit Duration”) 3000+

4%

This 5% data can lend insight on the level of involvement or engagement visitors have with your content. Sites with short Average Session Durations may suffer from lack of relevant content. The Average Session Duration metric is calculated by 2-3 dividing the total amount of min time visitors spend 27% 800-1000 | 2% on your site by the total number of Sessions.

1000-2000 | 7% If your site experiences 1-2 minshort Average Session 2000-3000 | 4% <1Time min on Page 43% Durations, examine the Average 3000+ | 5% 17% metric on a page by page basis to diagnose DATA DISCLAIMER: The data shared is reflective of 169 websites monitored

by MayeCreate using Google Analytics. The data is a snap shot of one month of activity gathered from May 6, 2014 to June 4, 2014. It is not representative of all websites in the world. It is displayed for discussion and benchmarking purposes.

L

3 4 5

OFFICE LIFE

Success 2-3 min 27% 1-2 min 43%

<1 min 17%

What We’ve Been Up To 3-4 min | 6% 4-5 min | 5% 5+ min | 2%

1

2

3

challenge areas. This will tell you where and how visitors spend time on the site. When reviewing this data, consider the amount of 2-3 min content offered on the page or site. If your site 27% is small, offering few pages or a small amount of content, it will naturally experience 1-2 Average min Session Durations than a min shorter 43% 7% site with many pages or generous amounts of content.

The sites we monitor experience Session Durations varying from 7 seconds to 12 minutes with an average of 1 minute 55 seconds. Over 70% show Average Session Durations of 3 minutes or less.

LEARN MORE about what you can expect from your website and how to read your Google Analytics reports in the first of our second semester workshops, Under the Hood of Google Analytics, held in September.

Sign up online for a session at:

mayecreate.com/workshops

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1: Monica’s baby belly turned into a watermelon! 2: We held Internet and marketing clinics at the Chamber of Commerce Business Expo. 3: Tim, Tyler and Sadie scored major swag at Adobe Camp. 4: Monica’s doggies loved our CBT 1985 Throwback ad.

5. Stacy hung out next to Wingate at Lowe’s Customer Appreciation Day. 6. Tranquility techs, Paden included, went on 15 installations since our last edition.

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5

Tranquility Internet

COLUMBIA FAMILY MEDICAL GROUP

Patients of CFMG are always greeted by the smiling faces of the friendly receptionists.

Upon entering the Columbia Family Medical Group office, visitors and patients are welcomed by a helping hands quilt hanging proudly just inside the door. Created by CFMG staff members at the time of their 25th anniversary, the quilt is covered with appliquéd hands signed by physicians and nurse practitioners representing the helping hands of the CFMG family.

Columbia Family Medical Group was started over 35 years ago by a duo of physicians with a mission statement that remains true to this day: provide comprehensive quality medical care at a reasonable cost to patients.

“They’re really a quintessential group of physicians,” explains Eva Trabue, CFMG Director of Operations.

“

Providing Care to Generations of Families

The dedication to patient care CFMG provides is clear: families come back through generations.

“The beauty of Columbia Family Medical Group is we can provide for the whole family,” Eva says, thoughtfully. “The doctors are now seeing children of patients they delivered themselves!”

The six physicians of CFMG provide a range of medical services including: annual physicals, baby and well child checks, allergy testing and treatment of acute and chronic aliments.

“Basically, we cover the full gamut,” says Eva, smiling. “When new patients call we try and fit them with a physician whom they can connect to.”

Now we can have several programs open. We don’t have to think about it, we can just open what we need and get on with our work. ” - Eva Trabue, CFMG Director of Operations

A physician is on-call 24/7; when the phone rings at CFMG the nurses and physicians who answer do the best they can to provide patients with care that same day.

Illnesses and ailments have no schedule; because of this, CFMG provides physician care to walk-in patients Saturday mornings from 9am to 11:30am.

“It’s really for Friday evenings, if your child is just not feeling good,” explains Eva, “or for those who wake up Saturday morning feeling ill. Just walk in and we’ll see you and send you on your way.”

CFMG utilizes NextGen, an Electronic Health Records (EHR) system, to safely store a patient’s medical history. The system saves physicians and nurses valuable time previously spent searching through paper records.

NextGen also includes NextMD, an online patient portal allowing

patients access to an array of services including: online bill pay, medication lists, prescription refill and appointment requests, even results of previous exams and lab work.

The medical world is constantly evolving and utilizing more and more advanced software and technology.

Upon the addition of the NextGen software, CFMG’s Internet speed needed a boost.

At the recommendation of Jesse Yankee, owner of EasyPC, Eva set up a meeting with Tranquility Internet General Manager, Travis Schumacher.

“I needed an explanation about why their service was the better way to go,” explains Eva, “and quite frankly, several other people recommended Tranquility because they were really happy with them. We liked the fact that Tranquility is local.”

CFMG has been with Tranquility since 2009 starting out with the 3MB Metro Ethernet service and later upgrading to 20MB Metro Ethernet to support their software upgrades.

“It was really an easy experience,” describes Eva of the initial installation

Computers work much more efficiently with Tranquility’s Internet service.

and setup of their Internet. “We made the decision; the install happened.”

There have been many successful improvements in the day to day operations of CFMG since their Internet upgrades. Patient check-in time has improved exponentially and now programs open easily, increasing overall productivity.

“You don’t think about the 5 seconds it could take for a window to open,” says Eva, “but that adds up.

You begin to notice real time.”

The Tranquility staff knows that not everyone is a techie; they take the extra time to patiently explain technical aspects customers may not fully understand.

“Travis is kind of an educator,” laughs Eva. “I’m not a computer person; I’m still The Physicians of CFMG amazed I can see it at the office AND at home! When I Dr. George Prica, Jr., M.D., since 1979 ask questions, he’s very open Dr. Kenneth G. Weston, M.D., since 1984 to explaining how things Dr. Ellen McQuie, M.D., since 1989 work.”

Dr. Siamac Vahabzadeh, M.D., since 2006 The staff at Tranquility is Justin Terrell, M.D., since 2013 aware how painful being placed on hold can be, Ashley Millham, M.D., starting August 2014

The CFMG 25th Anniversary quilt.

especially having to explain their situation over and over to different people. When a customer calls Tranquility they’re connected to a person; if the same customer calls back, they generally speak with the same customer service rep.

“We had a small issue and I had to make several phone calls to Tranquility,” explains Eva. “I got to speak to the same person each time and I would get calls back from that same person with updates.”

With foundations built on family values, Columbia Family Medical Group provides health care to generations of families, while familyowned Tranquility provides for the well-being of their Internet.

View the full article and more images in the blog post: tranquility.net/2014/cfmg

307 Locust Columbia, MO 65201 (573) 443-3983 (800) 326-8638 (573) 447-1836 TO:

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SMART S E R I E S

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WORKSHOP

SECOND SEMESTER: Under the Hood of Google Analytics Wednesday, September 10th

HTML Boot Camp

Wednesday, October 8th

Writing for the Web â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Round Two! Wednesday, November 12th

For more info or to sign up: mayecreate.com/workshops 573-447-1836 Photography by Sadie Thibodeaux Photography