When you dive into the world of website analytics, it can be hard to determine which information is pertinent, and which can be set aside. The abundance of information that’s available can be overwhelming and derail your strategic decision making efforts. While it’s better to have every data point you can collected, not all of it will be useful all of the time. Here are 15 important site metric that will track what you actually care about.
1.Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is the people who find you via internet search and venture through to your site. This is an essential site metric to track when you create an SEO strategy, as it will ultimately indicate how well your strategy is working. Ideally, organic traffic will increase as your SEO strategy is executed.
2. Pageviews
Pageviews provide insight into how many pages on your site have been visited within a given time period. Out of all site metrics why does this metric matter? The higher your pageviews, the more people are enjoying and taking time to read your content.
3. Unique Pageviews
Unique pageviews are a little different than pageviews, and allow you to drill down further into your visitors’ behavior. For example, if a visitor comes and visits a recipe on your blog, then jumps over to another post before heading back to the original, that would count as three pageviews. However, it would only count as two unique pageviews as one page was visited twice in one session.
4. Pageviews by Page
This feature allows you to drill down further and see the breakdown of which pages get the most pageviews.
5. Bounce Rate
Bounce rate provides valuable insight into how well-received your content is, especially in comparison to your organic traffic and pageviews. The bounce rate tells you how many people are leaving your website to head elsewhere.
6. Time Spent on Page
Another important site metric is time spent on page essentially tells you if someone is reading your content or not. It’s a great metric to use in conjunction with the bounce rate. For example, if you see that the average time spent on the page is six minutes, it shows that people are reading the content through. Thirty seconds, however, shows that they aren’t.
7. Click-Through Rate
Your click-through rate indicates how many people are clicking the buttons that you’ve put in place for sales purposes, contact information, etc. This is a crucial site metric for product launches and campaigns.
8. Exit Rate
Your exit rate tells you where people are leaving your site. This could be a natural progression, or it could be indicatave of a page that needs to be re-worked.
9. Traffic Sources
Traffic sources tell you how people are getting to your site. This is a great metric to get a big-picture overview of how your people find you: social media, organic search, email, direct, etc.
10. Demographics and Interests
Demographics and interests allow you to get into the weeds a bit. It tells you where your audience is in the world, and can even provide insight into their other search category interests and age groupings. By having this information, you can cater your content to improve your conversions.
11. New vs. Returning
New vs. returning users is exactly as it sounds: how many visitors within a specified timeframe are on your site for the first time and how many have come back for more? Both audiences are valuable!
12. Goal Completions
Using the goal completion setting on Google Analytics allows you to to set a goal, such as submitting an email address for a lead magnet, and gives insights into how many times it’s completed. This can tell you the dollar value of a conversion, as well as give you guidelines for setting and achieving targets.
13. Visitor Flow
Visitor flow tells you about your audience journey. Where do they start? Where do they go next? This can identify key areas for connecting with your people.
14. Uptime
In addition to behavioral metrics, you also want to know that the site is working to its full potential. Uptime tells you what percentage of the time the site is active. If it’s less than 99% of the time, it might be time to find a new host.
15. Site Speed
Site speed tells you about your site loading time. If it takes longer than two seconds for a page to load, you risk drastically increasing your bounce rate.
By collecting and analyzing this data, you can make informed business decisions that will lead you to continued success.
Author
Wendy is a super connector who helps businesses find their audience online through outreach, partnerships and networking. She frequently writes about the latest advancements in digital marketing and focuses her efforts on developing customized marketing plans depending on the industry and competition.
