Once we get into the swing of compiling an analytics report, it is easy to forget or misinterpret the various fields you are filling in on said report. These statistics are so vitally important, because they are the truest indicators of your website’s performance.  It enables you to pinpoint the faults in the website, as well as the effectiveness of each page, navigation or campaign’s performance. Perhaps it is a good idea to take a step back and remind ourselves exactly what it is we are looking at.

Here are 4 points which we find are most valuable:

1. New vs. Returning Visitors:
   Start your analytics report with the New vs. Returning visitors tab. New visitors, are visitors who are unique to their site visit, there is no cookie data indicating that they have been on your website before. If your goal is to have a high exposure rate, then the new visitors count is what you should be looking at. If the same person goes to your website 20 times in a month, they will still be counted as one visitor – this is important to know in order to avoid misinterpreting the visitor count.
2. Referral Traffic:
   This lets you find out via which sites users are landing on yours. Especially when you advertise, this option shows you just how effective the campaign is and which campaign is worth keeping. For example, if you see that your website gets referred often from a particular directory, it is recommendable to consider adding the directory in your marketing budget and acquiring a premium listing.
3. Popular Pages:
   Not all visitors will enter your website via the home page; this is why it is noteworthy to look at which pages receive the most entries. When you have a content page which is particularly well optimised, frequently displaying itself on the landing page’s top list, you can learn a lot from it. Use this information to set up your other web pages, optimising them in a different way to attract more visitors. Landing pages need to be under constant evaluation to ensure that they do not become dated, thus lowering the quality of your website content.
4. Popular Key Phrases Searched:
   Words and phrases users typed in, which lead them to your website. Including some of the more popular keywords and phrases in your web’s content, is good way of improving your search engine optimisation.

One way to grow the number of unique visitors to your website is by expanding your reach. By improving your content and targeting a specified grout of users, you may find that not only will the overall amount of visitors rise, but most importantly, the website may retain new dedicated followers. Don’t forget to include inbound telephone calls in your stats. These also count towards leads generated from the website. In addition to that, record the number of leads which have converted into sales, the final measure of your website’s success.

Find out how these visitors made their way to your website. Find out which pages they landed on when they arrived and find out what about these pages attracted them.  Establishing whether or not your website offers users quality content is easy. You will refer to the amount of time people spent on the site. For example, if users spent an average 30 seconds or less on the website, you need to re-evaluate your content. Another way to approach this is through the Bounce Rates. Although it must be said, that bounce rates are not necessarily negative – refer to our article The Truth behind High Bounce Rates for a comprehensive explanation. In short, a bounce rate of anything higher than 50% could mean that you are in trouble and should immediately take a look at your website and its content.

Sound Idea Digital is a full service digital marketing agency that specialises in content marketing | www.soundidea.co.za | info@soundidea.co.za | @SoundIdeaDMA