How do you know your website is effective? By integrating Web Analytics into your site design. This is a standard feature of all websites I build. Web analytics tools can give you the following information about your site:
- how many people have visited
- number of unique visitors
- referring source (a search engine, another website, etc.)
- how long the visitors stayed
- which search engine keywords were used to find your site
- which pages are the most popular
- how many visitors purchased something (assuming your site sells products)
Once you have this information you can draw conclusions about the success of your website, and find ways to improve it. For example, by noting how much time your guests spend on one page versus another, you can figure out the kind of content that’s most important to them. On the other hand, if you notice a high bounce rate—visitors leaving a few seconds after they arrive—you know the page they landed on isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do.
Other Patterns to Look For
- Are visitors entering your site on the page you expected? If you’re promoting a certain product or service, you’ll want visitors to enter on a page designed for that promotion. This “landing page” isn’t necessarily your home page. So if most folks are arriving on your home page, this might mean your promotional marketing needs rethinking.
- Take note of trend lines, big swings in page or site visits within a certain date range. Try to connect the dates of those swings with ad campaigns, content changes, or special offers you’ve made.
Some Terms (Metrics) to Understand
Bounce – the percentage of visitors who don’t click past the home page
Page Views – the number of different pages a visitor viewed
Visits – these are requests from a computer to see a web page (this is not necessarily your home page)