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Website Statistics

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Website Statistics

Logging into your website analytics for the very first time and trying to make sense of all the data can be a daunting process. Whether you are using Google Analytics to track your data or the admin centre, first impressions can be overwhelming. I remember the first time I looked at website statistics my immediate response was to log out and never venture into that particular realm of numbers and data again.

However, tracking and understanding your website analytics allows you to get insights into your visitors, their behaviour, traffic patterns, demographics, sales and referrals. And that’s really just scratching the surface of the basics. Tracking and analysing the data allows you to find room for improvement within your website and ultimately get more traffic and sales

With the overwhelming amount of data that is available it can be difficult to know which data to focus on and which to leave.
 

Unique visitors vs visits
The key indicator of how well your website is going overall is by tracking page visits and unique visitors. Google Analytics refers to visits as sessions and unique visitors as users. One is often mistaken for the other but they are quite different. Number of visits (sessions) is the total number of visits to your page over a particular time period. Unique visitors (users) is a little bit more important as it keeps track of brand new visitors and doesn’t double up. This means if I visit a page 50 times in one month, it will count as 1 unique visitor towards this particular stat.

Length of visit

The average session duration is another great measure of how well you have captured the attention of your audience and the quality of your website content. Anything less than 30 seconds and you most likely haven’t captured them as a potential client. If your website is ‘business card’ type of site which includes a quick call to action the length of visit might not be relevant - as long as the visitor has grabbed your contact details or location you’re good to go. Otherwise, being aware of the length of visit changing over time will help guide you in content creation and any future redesigns.

Bounce rate

Bounce rate (also known as exit rate or exit percentage) is the percentage of visitors that come to your site and exit within the first 30 seconds or don’t go past the first page. Acceptable bounce rates vary from industry to industry - 50% is acceptable for some, while 30% might be pushing it for others. It’s an important statistic to view alongside unique visitors because while you might have a very high number of those, the quality of the visitor might be diminished by the bounce rate.

Browsers & Devices

Knowing what browsers or devices your audience is using to access your website is helpful when making important decisions about your website, especially during a redesign process. Test your website in the top 3 browsers and devices (if possible) your visitors are using to see how compatible and accessible it really is - you might be surprised to know which browsers are the most popular amongst your user base.

Part II of this column is coming next week. In the meantime, if you'd like to learn how to access your web stats through the admin centre or add Google Analytics to your website give us a call on 1300 123 500.

Til next week,
Kasia