Web Analytics Offer Snapshot of Site Performance

Your company is pouring money into its website and SEO, but how often are you doing a checkup on the site’s performance? It’s simple to sign up for Google Analytics and start accumulating statistics on your site’s traffic, but what are the stats that are most meaningful?

What exactly do the numbers even represent? It only takes a few minutes within Google Analytics for eyes to glaze over at the vast amounts of data available. While you can dive as deep as you want into the analytics pool, below are few key numbers from the shallow end that you should be tracking.

Session – As you would expect, this is the number of visits to your website. Once a baseline average is established, the number becomes more meaningful, allowing you to compare it to set time periods (previous day, month, year, etc.). Tracking it enables you to see any drop-offs (or spikes) in visits, and course correct.

Pageviews – This category shows the number of views each page of your site received and can be listed as a percent of the total pages viewed. It is meaningful to determine if visitors are hitting the pages you want them to. If they aren’t, it’s time to make some changes to better feature important content.

Time on Page – Simply, how long visitors view each page. Again, this can reflect the quality of the page content as well as a visitor’s engagement with it.

Bounce Rate – This important figure is the number of visitors who view only a single page and leave the site. It’s a reflection of relevance of content and page design. Numbers can vary by industry, but generally, if your website has a bounce rate under 50 percent, you are doing pretty well. However, like all statistics, this once can be misleading. For instance, if the page is answering a specific question, the visitor got exactly what they needed and there was no reason to drill further into the site.