If you missed us saying it before, we’ll say it again: every business, whether it is home-based, small, medium or large, must have a website. A website is a powerful tool, particularly because a search engine, such as Google or Bing, can bring a prospective customer to your business’ website in a matter of seconds. When visitors do reach your business’ website, don’t you want to know what page they are landing on, where they are coming from and whether or not they are purchasing or subscribing? That’s where web analytics come in!
Being able to measure where visitors are coming from, what they are doing when they get there, and whether they are doing exactly what you want them to do is very important in calculating a return on investment, or ROI. There was a time when print media or TV ads were standard for marketing campaigns, but the ability to calculate an accurate ROI is extremely difficult. With a website and web analytics, though, measuring the effectiveness of campaigns is much easier!
During episode 179 of the Creating Wealth Show, Justin Cutroni, an author and web analytics expert stated that there are five key metrics that every webmaster should be tracking to measure the complete effectiveness of a website:
Unique Visitors
How many new visitors are coming to your website? Are they coming from search engines, referral sources or in a direct manner?
Visits/Sessions
Are return visitor coming back on a consistent basis and how often? Tracking visits and sessions can help measure the engagement of visitors.
Page Views
How many pages on average are the visitors viewing? With this piece of information, it can help marketers draw conclusions based on whether the website’s content is engaging or not and if the site structure is effective.
Bounce Rates
A Bounce rate is the percentage of unique or return visitors that land on a page and leave immediately. It essentially means, “I came to your website, this wasn’t what I was looking for, so I left immediately.” This statistic alone can help you understand if your messaging is clear, your content is interesting and if you are correctly optimizing the web pages.
Conversions/Goals
A conversion or goal is the reason businesses have websites, and it could mean something different for each business. As an owner or a person in charge of marketing, a conversion could mean obtaining subscribers, purchases or to simply have visitors browse for a specific amount of time. Conversions directly contribute to the bottom-line and help in measuring ROI for a specific campaign or for the existence of the website in general.
Although web analytics are not 100% accurate, it still can be a very effective tool. It allows business owners and marketers track activities that contribute to the bottom line. Web analytics are more than just website hits, it’s about drawing conclusions based on the tendencies of visitors and being able to measure whether or not a particular efforts are generating new business.
