Understanding your Website Statistics
Website stats, or web analytics, play an important role in making your website more effective. Understanding how users arrived at your site, what they did when they got there, and how often they are visiting is vital data, and you can use it make your website more successful.
Understand Your User
Web analytics can show you a wealth of information about your user. This person may eventually be your customer, so you should want all the information about them you can get. Here are some stats web analytics can provide you:
- Keyword Conversion: View what words are being used in search engines that in turn drive traffic to your site. Knowing what works allows you to better tailor your web content.
- Referring source: What site were they on before they arrived at yours? Was it Google, Yahoo, or a blog? Knowing where your traffic is coming from can help focus marketing efforts.
- User Data: Learn what browser your visitors are using, whether they have a Mac or PC, and what geographic region they are in.
- Top Files: Discover what files are the most downloaded from your website.
Understand Your Site
Your website is an irreplaceable tool for your company or organization. Knowing what parts of your site work and what parts need improvement will provide you with the knowledge to make your site more effective.
- Top Content: What page is the most popular on your site?
- Time Spent on Page: Knowing how long the average user spends on a single page will tell you the effectiveness of that page.
- Depth of Visit: Visits alone are a valuable stat, but depth of visit will show you how many pages were viewed during a single visit. This can shed light on the interconnectivity of your web content and website design.
Marketing and E-commerce
Web analytics can be used in conjunction with marketing efforts to better understand what tactics are working and where you can improve. Additionally, if you’re selling something on your website you must have an understanding as to why people are or are not committing to the purchase.
- Goal and Funnel Tracking: Track predetermined steps and learn if and when a user abandoned the process. Ideal for understanding why users aren’t purchasing your product online.
- Visits and Page Views: It’s always great to understand how much traffic your site is getting. Combine that with marketing efforts to learn what is working, what is bringing people to your site, and how that audience is using the site when they get there.
- Cost Per Click (CPC) Tracking: If you’re paying for keywords you can track the effectiveness of those words and phrases, which will allow you to generate a comprehensive adword strategy.
Terminology
- Hits: A hit represents any request to your server. One webpage can contain hundreds of hits. Therefore, hits are the most overhyped and least useful statistic.
- Page Views: A page view is counted anytime a single page from you site is loaded. If a user landed on the homepage, went to your products page, then went to your contact form that would count as three page views.
- Visits: A visit describes one single user session. A user can come to your site and view multiple pages, but that will only count as a single visit. Multiple hours must pass for an additional visit to be counted from the same user.
Conclusion
Effectively optimizing your website requires that you understand how it is being used. Web analytics are clear, direct, and reliable. If you have any questions or would like to better understand how web analytics can apply to your particular website please feel free to contact us. We’re here to help!