Originally written by Julian Karstel | Revised & Updated by Julian Karstel

“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” – Mark Twain.

The information that we believe, which isn’t true, is the information that causes us the most harm, explained by Thomas Gilovich’s book: ‘How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life’.

When it comes to measuring your website do not trust your instincts, trust data. Often people read into patterns that aren’t actually patterns at all or identify only appealing information. Just because you have a lot of hits on your website does not mean you are guaranteed success.

A growth in the number of unique visitors to your website indicates effective search engine optimisation. So you succeeded in attracting new visitors, but do they like what they see? Collect figures on repeat visitors, as well as time-spent per visitor. These figures indicate the efficacy of your website. After all only the most impressive websites get bookmarked and frequented.

Identify the most popular pages. This helps clarify the nature of the visits, such as jobseekers looking for business details, which are unlikely to be interested in your products. Observe the order of pages visited as well as the exit pages thus identifying key points on the website which need altering or improvement.

If you struggle to break from bias, get an outside party to interpret your statistics. Sometimes a neutral eye is all you need to steer you on the right path to understanding your website statistics.

The main aim of your website is to convert visitors into leads and leads into customers. By constantly scanning your website statistics for improvements and trends you can change it from just a source of information to a powerful customer generating tool.

Website visitors alone don’t pay the bills.

Got any comments or suggestions, then drop a comment! Or connect with me @JulianKarstel

Julian Karstel is a Digital Marketing Consultant for Sound Idea Digital | @JulianKarstel|Julian@soundidea.co.za

Sound Idea Digital is a full service digital agency | www.soundidea.co.za