Insights

Setting goals is great, but how do you reach them? The key is utilizing your website’s analytics. Measuring the effectiveness of your efforts is critical in detecting improvements in traffic, conversions, and many other variables. 

We know what you’re thinking; data, analytics, figures, oh my! But analytics aren’t as daunting as they seem. In fact, they can be your friend. Understanding your business’s analytics helps you better understand your customers and the behaviors that drive them to your site. This will enhance the way you do business and allow you to make data-driven decisions that are more effective than decisions made blindly.

Below you will find the top 5 ways to get the most out of your website’s analytics.

1. Tracking custom goals and conversions
Track, track, track, we can’t say it enough. In fact, it’s one of our three essential steps for maximizing your website’s potential.  In order to know if your goal is being reached, or substantial progress is being made towards reaching it, you have to know where you started and if the needle is moving in the right direction. If your goal is to increase transactions for your eCommerce store, you can track the number of purchases taking place. If you want to see the exposure a whitepaper, media gallery, or PDF document is getting, the number of downloads can be tracked.

You can track form submissions, types of engagements, and so much more. Tracking goals can help determine the quality of the traffic, the progress towards reaching your goal and can be a deciding factor when it comes to additions, changes, or the subtraction of elements on your website.

2. Identifying cyclical trends
Monitoring your website’s analytics on a regular and consistent basis will help identify cyclical trends that may start to appear over time. This can include growth during peak seasons, downturns in activity during slow seasons, static figures during other seasons, etc. Knowing the cycles of your business allows you to adapt your approach – whether it be marketing, sales, or procurement – to meet the needs of your customers, and your business, according to current trends.

Your future self will thank you! You become better prepared and equipped to respond to changes in demand if you are aware of the cyclical trends in your industry.

3. Identifying quality referral sources
How are these viewers getting to your site? Which of those channels is driving the most traffic? These are important questions to consider and can be answered with analytics. Identifying the quality referral sources allows you to target marketing, sales, or other promotional efforts on the platforms that have tangible value to your traffic rates.

When our team analyzes your analytics, we can see if traffic is from organic searches, whether Facebook is converting users, or the specific channel that is leading to a high bounce rate- meaning they have abandoned the site without engaging first.

4. Identifying converting traffic flows and visitor behavior
When conversions or goals are being tracked, the visitor behavior, and content flow these converters take throughout the site, can be tracked. So, how does that work?

Let’s say, for example, that 80% of all conversions hit a specific page and those who don’t convert never hit that page. We would conclude that that page is a key page for facilitating a conversion. We would then implement stronger callouts to that specific page to ensure there is more visibility to it, therefore getting more people to convert. It’s as simple as that!

5. Identifying spam and/or robot traffic
Traffic with spam origins can negatively impact a website’s engagement metrics. This type of traffic can sometimes be malicious, but usually, it just increases a bounce rate, decreases average time on a page, and decreases pagers per session, all while simultaneously making it look like there was a spike in traffic. This can be misleading and can alter the perception of the progress you are making on a goal. By filtering spam traffic out, you get clean, accurate data that you can utilize without feeling like the data is working against you.

Since analytics are crucial to a business’s success, they shouldn’t be taken lightly! Let us be your go-to for analytics services. At Webfitters, we provide monthly reports to our clients and free quarterly reports for clients that are on our hosting packages. The reports give us the opportunity to identify areas of improvement for a business and their website. Whether it’s improving the time spent on a page, the bounce rate, conversions, or any other goal, we can measure the effectiveness of the efforts taken by utilizing analytics reports.