Without carefully tracking performance through analytics it’s hard to know how much of an influence your website is actually having on your business. It could be going far beyond your expectations and driving massive revenue, or it could be stuck in the depths of the internet, not doing anything for your brand. The only way to know for sure is to carefully track your site analytics.
Make sure that you have access to detailed reporting within your website platform and start monitoring the traffic on your website in just a few minutes. Once you understand your site metrics, you can start tweaking your marketing strategy and your website based on the reports that you’re seeing. In the beginning pay attention to key metrics such as your visitor traffic, carefully monitor how your website is converting, and learn how to break down your metrics to view them at a granular level.
Visitor Traffic
The easiest way to get a quick pulse on how your website is performing is by looking at your visitor traffic. Pageviews, or the total number of pages viewed, can be useful to judge performance at a glance, but may not always be the most accurate representation of success. Repeat views of the same page by the same user are counted towards the total pageview count, so you may be seeing inflated numbers. A better metric to pay attention to is unique visitors.
Rather than counting each time a page is viewed, unique visitors tracks the number of different users that come to your website. This will show you how many people are actually coming to your website over time, and whether or not your marketing dollars are working to drive more people to your website. If you’re spending too much for insignificant traffic, it may be time to look at a better SEO (search engine optimization) strategy, or consider targeting different keywords and/or audiences.
Traffic vs. Conversions
Looking at big numbers like pageview counts may feel good and can help make your website sound successful, but conversions are a better judge of (and more important to) a business’ bottom line. Looking at the number of unique visitors coming to your page and comparing that to the number of conversions can tell you the basic success rate of your website.
If your website has a low conversion rate, don’t panic. Pay more attention to the conversion rate for the specific pages where you’re trying to drive action. This could be a page trying to make a sale, gather an email lead, or book an appointment. No matter what action you’re trying to push people to accomplish, if that page has a poor conversion rate then you’re wasting money. Tweaking your messaging, website design, and having only one conversion goal at a time will help your website close more deals.
Learn To Break It Down
Once you’ve figured out how many people are coming to your website and can find out how well your website is converting, then you can start breaking down your reports to know what specific pages or campaigns are working, and which ones aren’t. You might be getting more traffic from Facebook, but if all of your conversions are coming from email, then it might be time to shift your focus to email marketing. If your marketing spend aligns with your best converting sources, then you’re likely on the right track, but you may still be able to optimize your site even further.
The same goes for specific pages on your website. If you’re driving all of your traffic to one page of your site, but a different page is the only one with good conversion rates, then you might want to start directing traffic there or build a landing page that is similar. The same goes for looking at how important SEO is to your website. If SEO is not a significant source of traffic, it might be time to create a content marketing strategy around your brand to boost traffic from direct search so you don’t have to pay for all of your traffic. Plus, organic traffic tends to convert better anyways.
Smarter Websites Sell Better
With smart website analytics in your back pocket, you’ll be able to run your entire marketing strategy with precision. Instead of trying out an idea and guessing if it worked or not, you’ll be able to print out reports that show for a fact how they performed. Analytics may be another thing that you need to learn, but it’s one that you can’t afford to run your business without.
Smart site statistics can be invaluable to any small business or brand, shedding light on what’s working and what’s not — in real-time. The better you can understand your visitor traffic, your conversions, and the breakdown of where they are coming from throughout your website, the smarter your marketing strategy will become.
