Track Website Analytics
Ever been flummoxed by your TV’s universal remote? Macroeconomics? The 5th season of LOST? Trying to make heads or tails of your website’s analytics is actually worse. Okay, not really, but it can be pretty confusing. Like...how do you know which parts of your website analytics are most important? And what exactly the stats are trying to tell you?
While we can’t help you with your remote (can anyone?), we do know a thing or two about the Web. So wipe that blank stare off your face; we’ve identified some of the most important stats to help you increase your website’s performance:
Conversion Rate: A conversion can be any kind of action taken on your website, whether it’s someone buying a product or filling out a form. You can track things like total sales, contact forms, and cart abandonment rate, and track and compare them on a month-to-month basis.
Converting Keywords: While it’s good to know that the search engines are sending you traffic, you need to know what keywords your visitors are searching for, as well as the ones that actually convert into leads and sales.
Hits: Okay, so this is actually a stat to AVOID. Contrary to popular opinion, a hit is not a person! We’ve been screaming this from the rooftops for years, but apparently we need a megaphone, too. Hits are simply file requests made to the server. All the elements of your webpage -- images, javascript, and CSS – are separate files, so just one webpage can have dozens of files. Those 18 hits you just got on your homepage? Yep, they’re all from one visitor.
Pageviews: Pageviews tell you the number of times various pages on your site have been viewed. This is a great way to find out which pages of your site are most popular.
Top Referring Websites: This info tells you which websites are driving the most traffic to your website. Here’s why that’s incredibly useful: say you find out that your biggest referral is an organic gardening blog. You can target other gardening blogs as part of a link building campaign. By knowing exactly where your traffic is coming from, you can get some direction for any future link building efforts.
Traffic Referrals: This stat measures the traffic visiting your site, broken out by where the traffic came from: search engines, Pay-Per-Click ads, link traffic or direct. The referral rate can help you determine which channel is most effective for you, and which is…not.
User Sessions: A user session begins when a user with a unique IP address enters a website. A session is usually limited to 20-30 minutes. This stat is helpful in analyzing how long visitors stay on your site and what they do while visiting.
Unique Visitors: A unique visitor is a single person (as opposed to a search engine bot) who enters a website. Regardless of how many times that person enters the site in a given timeframe, that person is still counted as one visitor, which gives you a better idea of your site's actual traffic.
Still confused? Let us take the guesswork out of website analytics. It's what we do--all day, everyday. Call us at 888.485.4932 or use the form on this page to contact us.