Do you know how many people are visiting your website and how they behave once they get there?
Tracking key website metrics will help you to do just that.
A website is often a crucial platform for businesses. However, if you’re updating and developing your website based on gut-feeling or assumptions then how effective can that platform really be?
By tracking visitor activity and understanding the performance of your website, you can gain deeper insights that will allow you to make informed improvements. Making changes based on fact will ensure your website continues to attract new visitors, maintain the interest of your existing audience and see greater engagement all around.
Here’s 4 important metrics you can start tracking now!
Traffic
Traffic is one of the vital metrics to monitor as this determines the overall number of visitors to your website. Monitoring traffic will give a good indication of how well your site is growing. Meanwhile, total traffic will highlight the number of new (unique) and repeat visitors, which can help you determine the visibility of your site and quality of your content.
Traffic source
Alongside awareness of how many people visit your website, it’s important to know where they are coming from. Traffic sources can, generally, be broken down into four categories:
- Organic search: These visitors have come to your website through search engines. This is a great source as the traffic is ‘free’ rather than paid for and the user is more likely to engage as they have specifically searched for keywords related to your business.
- Direct: This is traffic that comes directly to your website. This could be a user who bookmarks your webpage for later or repeat use, or someone who heads straight to your website by typing in your URL.
- Referral: This traffic has been directed from another website to your own. This could be, for example, from a guest blog you authored or because the website featured your URL in an article. This is not only great for attracting new visitors but also helps with your search engine rankings as it acts as a great testimonial of your website and content.
- Other: This will typically refer to traffic from social media. This can help to highlight how sharable your content is and the types of platforms that best suit your business.
Bounce rate
This metric refers to the users who click through to your website and leave immediately. A low bounce rate means visitors are finding a good reason to stay on your website such as relevant, engaging content. High bounce rates mean you’re struggling to retain visitors. This could be down to slow load times, irrelevant use of keywords or broken links.
Conversion rate
One of the most important metrics! Your conversion rate will consider how well your website encourages a visitor to conduct a specific action – whether that’s completing a sale, signing up to a newsletter or booking on to an event. This metric will help you to understand how successfully your website is achieving its aims and whether changes need to be made.
All these numbers and statistics can appear daunting to a business only just starting to track the myriad of metrics available. However, it’s not as intimidating as it first seems.
By starting to monitor new metrics, you can easily integrate tracking into your marketing and communications activities