Knock knock. Who’s there? Find out with analytics

Do you know who is visiting your website? How many, when, from where? And what are they looking at on your website, from which page do they leave..? Can you measure the success of your website without knowing the answers to those questions – I wouldn’t be able to which is why I have web analytics set up to give me those answers and more.

Web analytics provide the seemingly invisible information on visitor behaviour that you may only have dreamed of. By looking at click streams and page impressions we can work out what people are interested in and where perhaps a website needs strengthening. Here’s a few more things web analytics can tell you about your website that you may not have thought of (it’s not just about unique visitors and page impressions!):

1. Referring websites. Where are your visitors coming from? You may be surprised by this data as you will find not only the usual suspects (search engines) but also some referrers such as perhaps blogs and news sites recommending your product or services.
2. Repeat visits. Are people coming back to your site and regularly? Combine this metric with specific page impressions and you’ll see what content on your website is drawing consistent traffic and drawing people back time and again. You can then capitalise on this.
3. Conversion rates. By setting goals in your analytics programme (we prefer to use Google Analytics) and assigning a monitory value you can start to calculate ROI and asses the actual value of different referrers and pages. This will help you when you want to look at where you might invest in further development, PR placement and advertising.

So if you thought it was all about just the number of visitors we hope you are pleased to see there is more business value in employing a comprehensive web analytics programme behind your website.