Launching a new website?
Want to understand how your marketing dollars are working for you? If so,
chances are you are considering the power of web analytics. Unfortunately, the
process of finding the right analytics program for your business can be
overwhelming. In order to find the right software you need to know exactly what
it is you want to measure. And once you find the right software you need to
know how to interpret the data. And I should mention, software providers are
plentiful and the amount of data these tools can produce is endless. For those
of us who are new to web analytics, (myself included) it’s not as scary as it
might look. Sure, web analytics is a broad and ever changing landscape, but
with the right jumping off point, any marketer can harness this powerful tool.
In the spirit of
simplification, and bottom lines, I want to explore some of the most basic, yet
important metrics to look at when considering an analytics program. This list
really breaks down the building blocks of web analytics. (Parsons, 2013)
1.
Unique Visitors
In its most
basic interpretation, this figure represents the audience that your website is
reaching. The amount of unique visitors reflects the number of separate
individuals who visited your site, regardless of the number of visits for each
individual.
This number
can also be a great performance indicator of offline and online marketing
efforts. For instance, if you ran a television commercial during the month of
August directing viewers to your website, you would want to see if this caused
a spike in unique visitors.
2.
Referrers
Okay, so
you have figured out if people are visiting your site with your measure of
unique visitors. Now it’s time to figure out where those people are coming
from. Are they coming from social networks? Links? Search engines? This
information will help you understand how your current promotional efforts are
working and where to focus resources in future efforts.
3.
Bounce Rate
Now, of the
people who are visiting your site, how many of them leave on the first page of
their visit? Your marketing efforts might be successful in getting visitors to
your site, but once they are there, are they able to find what they are looking
for?
4.
Top Pages
What about
your site do your visitors like the most? This will indicate which content to
focus on moving forward, and which content is a waste of resources.
5.
Exit Pages
Are there any
weak spots in your website to be aware of? This metric highlights any pages
that are causing visitors to exit. Whether it by chance, content or navigation
issues, it will be up to you to decipher whether this metric is hinting at
serious problems.
6.
Conversion
This is the
ultimate indicator of whether your site is successful. Are people doing what
you are trying to convince them to do? Are they making a purchase, filling out
a form, or reading an article? If you have a low conversion rate, you might be
attracting the wrong kind of visitors.
Again these metrics are just
the foundation of web analytics, in the next blog post we will explore some
more advanced ways to monitor and improve your website beyond these fundamental
measures.
Parsons, N. (2013). The 6
most important web metrics to track for your business website. Retrieved 3
November 2013 from
http://upandrunning.bplans.com/2013/10/17/the-6-most-important-web-metrics-to-track-for-your-business-website/
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