How to Analyze Your Website Traffic

Getting loads of traffic to your website won’t necessarily get you loads of leads. That’s because not all website traffic is created equal. There’s useless website traffic that may leave your site as quickly as it arrives, and then there’s quality website traffic that tends to stick around and convert. A site with low amounts of quality website traffic is actually more valuable than a site that generates tons of useless traffic that does nothing other than flee.

How to Analyze Your Traffic

The free service of Google Analytics makes it incredibly easy to analyze your website traffic. If you haven’t set it up already, all you need to do is head to google.com/analytics to launch this powerful tool. You’ll have an array of metrics at the ready, and you’ll want to pay special attention to the nine listed below.

• Page Views: This tallies the amount of times visitors landed on each page on your website. Keep in mind a single visitor can rack up numerous page views if he or she visits a page multiple times.
• Visits: Here you’ll get the overall number of visits to your site, regardless of how many pages each visitor viewed.
• Unique Visitors: This metric provides the number of unique visitors to your website. Each person counts as one unique visit, even if that person visits your site more than once.
• Average Duration Rate: The average duration rate tells you how much time visitors spend on your site once they arrive. Don’t fret if the duration appears rather short. The average time someone spends on a site is typically three to five minutes, sometimes less.
• Bounce Rate: Bounce rate refers to the amount of people that leave your site immediately after landing on it, often when they realize it’s not what they were looking for. The average bounce rate ranges around 50 to 59 percent.
• Percentage of New Visits: This measurement gives you the percentage of traffic that comes from first-time visitors. If you’re going for new prospects, you want this number to be high. If you’re aiming for repeat visitors, you want it to be lower.
• Real-Time Traffic: Here you’re able to see how many people are on your site in real time at any given time. It’s particularly handy when you launch a promotion and want to see if it’s making an immediate impact.
• Social Media Analytics: This tool lets you see how much of your traffic is coming from social media, and which platforms are sending the most visitors your way. A solid mix to aim for is about 50 percent of your traffic coming from social, and the other half coming organically from search engines.
• AdWords Measurements: Connect your Google Analytics to your AdWords campaign to see how your online ad campaigns are faring.
  
  

See Also: Need Quality Leads? Here’s How to Get Them

How to Improve Traffic Quality

If your bounce rate is shockingly high and other stats dismally low, you may want to make some changes to improve traffic quality. In fact, you can make these changes even if you’re good with your stats to enhance your website’s performance even further.

Improving traffic quality starts by improving various aspects of your website. You can begin by improving:

Navigation

Streamlined navigation is one of the most crucial aspects of any website, giving visitors a seamless way to find and access what they need. A good rule of thumb is to ensure every page on your site is accessible within no more than five clicks.

Quality and Diversity of Content

Quality content has long been a requirement for drawing in quality website traffic, and now it’s just as important to serve up a range of different content types. In addition to the standard blog post, choices include videos, podcasts, interviews, infographics, white papers and many others. Diversifying your content helps you reach more people, thereby increasing your chances of gaining more quality traffic.

Design

The best website design is both simple and appealing. Too much clutter tends to drive visitors away, as does an unattractive look and feel. The best way to ensure your design is doing its job is to test various components of your site. You can run A/B tests on everything from color schemes to content types, giving you insights on what your target visitors prefer.

Social Media Strategy

To help ensure quality traffic from social, make sure your social media strategy is targeting the right people and providing a rundown on what your company is all about. Visitors who are educated about your company are more likely to convert once they land on your site.

Quality over quantity reigns supreme in many instances, and website traffic is definitely one of them. Instead of focusing solely on high traffic numbers, concentrate on bringing in quality website traffic, or the type of visitors who want, need and are more than happy to purchase what you’re selling.