If you have a website that you’ve been trying to grow, chances are you’ve been using tracking tools like Google Analytics to track visitors to your site and to see what they’re doing while there. Using analytical tools is a terrific idea, but can be confusing to those who aren’t as technologically savvy. Having an understanding of what each statistic means and which ones are most important can be hard to get a handle on.
There’s a ton of statistics you can look at, but not all of them are as important as others. By keeping a close eye on the statistics mentioned below, you’ll be able to gain a much better understanding of just how well your website is performing.
Unique Visitors
This stat is self-explanatory. It will give you the total number of visitors to your website. The number will be smaller than a lot of other stats, but it’s very helpful in that you’ll see whether or not people are finding your website. If you notice that the rate of unique visitors to your site decreases, working on search engine optimization or other initiatives may be needed.
Page Views
The number of actual page views will always be greater than that of unique visitors. As a general rule, the more page views that your site gets, the better. If you can get an average of two page views or more per unique visitor, you’re on the right track. Most websites won’t get this type of traffic, however. Most visitors to new websites will find the new website on a search engine and then leave immediately after getting the information they searched for. Every website has this type of “drop-in visitor.” To increase page views per visit, you have to give people a reason to go further. Be sure you have a compelling call to action on each page that will bring visitors to other pages.
Referrers
Search engines are the most common referrers to websites. While search engines are a wonderful way to gain new visitors, it’s also important to acquire referrals from other sources. Doing so will help your site’s ranking by increasing backlinks to your site. Comment marketing, guest blogging, and link trading are just a few ways to increase referrers.
Search Terms
Examining the different search terms that visitors use will show you exactly how people are going about locating your website through search engines. This will prove to be very helpful to you when optimizing your website for search engines. By optimizing for particular words and phrases that you know people are searching for, can increase your traffic substantially.
Bounce Rate
This will tell you the number of people who visit your website and then leave right away. If visitors to your site tend to leave immediately, your bounce rate will be high. This is obviously not a good thing. Finding ways to keep visitors on your site longer is necessary in order to lower bounce rates and achieve success with your website.
Visits by Country
You may think that most of the visitors to your website come from your own country, but you might be surprised to learn that this is not always the case - or at least that you’re drawing from a wider area than you realized. If you notice that you’re getting a large number of visitors from Germany, for example, think about optimizing your website so that even more Germans will visit. This is a great way to expand into markets you might not have otherwise considered.
By having a full understanding of your website’s statistics, you’ll be much better equipped to do what is needed to bring more traffic to your site, and ultimately boost your bottom line. Which stats do you think are most important and why? Share with us in the comments.