One of the main reasons why analytics is used on websites is to find out how well it is performing, and one of the indicators of performance when it comes to websites is the amount of traffic coming to your site. Not that many website owners know of the importance of tracking the traffic coming to your site, and this post will aim to show you exactly why you should track traffic coming to your pages.
When it comes to your site, the first thing people should remember is that the lifeblood of a website is the people who come to it. In short, traffic is important to a site. When you track the traffic on your site using Google Analytics, you should know that this does more than just find out how many people are coming to your site. This also shows you key indicators of success such as length of stay, conversions, and even where these people come from before they arrived at your site.
To do this, you need to use a tool that shows you not only how many people come and go to your site but also these other factors that play a big role in your site’s success. This tool is called Google Analytics, and here are some of the things it can show you when it comes to the traffic that comes to your pages:
Bounce rate – when a person “bounces” from your pages, it basically means that they just dropped by and left just as quickly. These are the people who just came to one page, did not stay too long or even browse your site, and left. How important is it for you to know your bounce rate? This will let you know which pages people are bouncing off from. These pages may need more engaging content, more interesting snippets and links leading to other pages, and even images that can capture the attention of your target market.
The importance of knowing the bounce rate of your site and what pages these happen on will help you improve these to make them more engaging and make people stay longer on your site. This information will also help you find ways to keep people more interested in your site, which in turn may increase conversions and revenues.
Busiest time of pages – there are specific times when people look for specific services or products. Knowing when your target market searches for what you have to offer will help you create campaigns, time social media posts, and be present to answer questions that your clients may have for you. In short, when you have information on when your visitors usually come to your site, you can schedule the posting of new content to coincide with these times.
Entry and exit points – you also find out where people came from, what page they ended up on from the link they clicked, and whether they left on that same page or elsewhere. This is different from bounce rate since it gives you details regarding which URL the person came from to get to your site. This factor helps you determine if they came from your social media pages, from a search engine results page, from affiliate sites, and even from your paid ads.
This will also help you determine where their interest in your site started to wane or if they concluded their visit with an affirmative action (ordering, opting in, etc.). This will help you check the path they took to conclude their visit in a conversion, which can then give you the insight you need to tweak your pages in a similar way to emulate the success of these paths.
How many pages were visited – tracking your traffic will also show you how many pages a specific visitor had to go through before they left your site or concluded an affirmative action. This can show you just how long it took them to find what they were looking for, how many pages it took for them to lose interest, and other similar factors.
This can help you do a few things, such as change the structure of your internal links, create links that connect to the pages that people often end up converting from, and landing pages that lead people to what they are looking for as quickly as possible.
These are just a few of the things you can get when you start tracking your site’s traffic. The information that you gain from using Google Analytics to do this will help you immensely when it comes to fixing your site to make it earn more. This will also help you understand your visitors and target market better since you will be able to determine from the information gained how they behave, what pages they like, and where they came from before getting to your site.
