Our Digital Strategist, Clark Chapman, breaks down the website traffic metrics you need to know if you want a busier site and happier customers.

Sherlock Holmes once said, “it’s a capital mistake to theorise before one has data,” and you don’t get much cleverer than the pipe smoking man himself.

But for your website, it’s now rarely a lack of data that’s the problem. Grappling with it all can feel like traversing a minefield. Blindfolded. Wearing a sack.

Once you’ve set up a website traffic checker like SEMRush, Ahrefs, or SimilarWeb, the real investigatory work begins. The amount of data can be a little overwhelming at first, so we’ve outlined 10 key website traffic metrics to look out for, and what they really mean for you.

Overall visits

Lots of visits to your website is a good thing, right? Well, yes and no. Remember, this metric looks solely at the number of visits to your website. Not who, not how, not when; certainly not whether they’re relevant to your business.

On its own, this metric doesn’t tell you a great deal but should always be your first port of call. It’s your gateway into the next nine metrics.

Unique visits

Unique visits break down the number of actual individual humans that visit your site in a given period. Even if someone visits 20 times, they’re only counted once. Oh, and don’t ever buy website traffic from online bots to try and game this metric, you’ll be heavily punished by Google.

Pages viewed per visit

This is the average number of pages an average visitor to your site will see. Google likes to see happy users spending lots of time on a site, exploring lots of useful content. This metric gives you an understanding of website relevancy and the overall user experience (UX).

But beware, this metric should always be read within the context of how you expect and intend users to behave on your site. If you’re driving the bulk of your customers to a single landing page, this figure will appear artificially low compared to other sites.

Bounce rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors landing on one page on your site and leaving without going to another. A high bounce rate, above 70%, may mean potential customers aren’t seeing content that matches their expectations.

Your website needs to be filled with relevant keywords related to your product or service. Use Google’s own Keyword Planner to find out what people are searching for.

It’s worth noting that like other data, your bounce rate can be high if an online promotion is driving the potential customer to one page. For example, if I click on a Facebook ad that leads me to a landing page with a podcast player, I am unlikely to leave that page but the website is still doing its job.

Traffic share

Mobile vs desktop is no longer the Ali vs Foreman scrap it once was. Google is mobile first, meaning website crawlers will always favour websites that look good and work well on phones.

In my experience, desktop usually yields B2B website traffic and mobiles are used more for personal consumption. But even if 99% of your traffic comes from desktop, still focus on getting it mobile friendly.

Subdomains

A fancy way of saying ‘other pages on your website,’ but we like to sound smart. Delving into the traffic of subdomains provides insights into your most popular and engaging pages.

For example, if you find many of visitors are going to your careers page, it’s clear that people are using your site to search for work. It may not be what you intended but it shows a clear interest and gives you something concrete to react to, however you choose.

Average visit duration

This metric can be an indicator of the engagement levels on your website. More often than not, if the visit duration is less than a minute, the intended webpages aren’t performing their duty.

However, don’t be fooled by the numbers. They take into account all behaviour and don’t consider the intention of the site visitor. If you have a landing page with minimal content that’s linked to an ad, then that person might only be expected to stay on the website for a short period.

It’s also worth looking at this number alongside your subdomains; people speedily flicking between pages on your site is a sign that your site is too hard to navigate. Most people will give up the hunt, but take lessons from those poor souls that persevere through your overly complicated site.

Traffic by location

Where in the world are your website traffic visitors coming from? It’s really important to know which continent, which country or even which city. If the majority of your visitors come from the USA then you can adapt your copy to better interact with a US audience.

However, not all traffic is good traffic. If 70% of your traffic comes from Indonesia but you don’t sell anything in Indonesia, there’s a problem. It may be that your paid ads are coming up in Indonesia’s search traffic and you’ll need to take action to prevent them showing up in the future.

Traffic sources

If you don’t look at any other metric please check this one out. You’ll most likely see the following four:

·       Referral: a link that drove traffic to your website from another one

·       Social: any traffic that comes via social media

·       Search: visitors found your website via Google

·       Direct: when someone writes your website address directly into the browser or clicks on a bookmark of your URL

Understanding the source of your traffic provides insight into your overall digital marketing efforts and ultimately increase visits to your site. For example, if none of your traffic is coming from social media despite splashing the cash on paid content, it’s time to revisit your ad strategy.

Traffic journey

As well as looking at where your traffic came from it’s a good idea to look at where it goes because this can open up a number of opportunities. You can use the information to create display ads on these specific sites. If you’re lucky you can also identify your online competition. 

Conclusion

By understanding these key metrics, you can drive more traffic to your website. The data is there to help you improve the user experience but it won’t provide the answers without good old-fashioned detective work.

Remember:

·       It’s important to understand how you expect customers to behave on the website and view data in accordance with those expectations

·       You wouldn’t stay on a website that doesn’t meet your expectations and neither will your potential customers

·       Use the data to improve the design of your website or landing page

·       Always look at the data about how people get to your site, where they are accessing it and where they go afterwards to get a great insight into your overall digital marketing efforts

Sookio can help tame your data and shape it into a cohesive, winning strategy. Is your site working hard enough for you? Contact us now.