Google Analytics is one of the most comprehensive web traffic programs available on the internet. Sign up for your free account by visiting www.google.com/analytics. Once you sign up for an account, you will be given a few lines of code. This code must be placed inside the body tag at the bottom of each page on your web site.
Once your google code is installed, it will begin to collect data from your web site. This data is placed in various categories that describe where visitors came from, what they did when they entered your site, what type of browser they use, what page they exited from and much more. Knowing how many visitors your web site has received is not enough to make any real assessment of how effective your web site is. You need to know what pages keep the visitor’s attention, how the site flows and if the structure of the site is meeting your business and marketing goals.
The first page on your Google analytics page is the Dashboard. The dashboard gives you a “big picture” summary of what has been happening on your web site for the time period that you specify.
- Visits: The total number of people who have visited your web site
- Pageviews: The number of pages that have been viewed within your site (this number is often called “hits” – but it is an overinflated number and does not represent the number of people who have visited your web site).
- Pages/Visit: How many pages the average visitor looked at while on your web site.
- Bounce Rate: How many visitors came and immediately left the web site.
- Average Time on Site: How much time the average visitor spent on your web site.
- New Visits: The number of people who visited the site for the first time.
Top Traffic Sources:
Top traffic sources tell you where you are getting your visitors from.
This is particularly important if you are using a Pay Per Click campaign as you can track your ROI (return on investment).
- Direct traffic: This is the percentage of people who came into your web site by typing the actual web address (www.yoursite.com) or who may have your site saved in their favorites.
- Referring Sites: The percentage of visitors that found your web site via another web site.
- Search Engines: The percentage of people who found your web site via the search engines. This is further broken down by organic keywords, the keywords that are not paid for that your site naturally ranks in the search engines for, and PPC (pay per click) keywords. Google also breaks out which keywords visitors used to find your web site.
In reviewing the below:
You can get a general overview of how the web site is performing. Each of these statistics can be clicked on and drilled down further for more detail.
The first thing I noticed is the bounce rate. If half the people entering the web site are leaving, it’s obvious that visitors are not getting what they came for. You can further drill down the data to see that the majority of site visitors are entering the web site on the product page. Google also shows you what keyword was used to land on the page. So, if your web page has been optimized using “keyword 1” and the information about that keyword is not immediately noticed, your visitor will leave. It is apparent that you need to make content changes, perhaps add a photo or something that will grab the visitor’s attention and let them know you have what they are looking for.
This is a HUGE topic – but the basic gist is that it’s not just about having a web site that brings in visitors, you have to have the content to keep them there. People are too impatient to “work” for information. If your web site does not immediately address their need, they will click off and find another site that does.
NUMBERS AND WHAT THEY MEAN
- 620 Visits
- 422 Absolute Unique Visitors
- 2,054 Pageviews
- 3.31 Average Pageviews – The average visitor looked at just over 3 pages in your web site.
- 00:03:07 Time on Site – The average visitor spent just over 3 min. on your web site.
- 50.32% Bounce Rate – over 50 % of the site visitors came then left the web site.
- 63.55% New Visits
- 60.48% Direct Traffic – 60% of site visitors typed in the web address
- 17.74% Referring Sites – almost 18% of the visitors came from another web site
- 21.77% Search Engines – just over 21 % of the visitors found the site in the search engines.