Introduction to Web Analytics - A Beginner’s Guide

2. Visitors and Page views:

Web analytics tools reveal key details about your site visitors—including their average time spent on page and whether they’re a new or returning user—and which content draws in the most traffic.

Page views are like counting how many times someone looks at a page on a website. Every time a page loads in a browser, it's counted as one page view. If someone looks at a page, then looks at it again, it counts as two page views.

Importance: By tracking visitors and page views - you will know which areas of your website to focus on to increase engagement rate. Good engagement rate encourages visitors to explore more pages on your website, ultimately increasing chances of conversions.

3. Conversions:

One of the neglected but most important web metric to track is Conversions. You can keep track of events and goals on your website to know how many visitors actually did what you wanted them to do. This helps in understanding the conversion rate, which shows the percentage of visitors who complete specific actions.

Importance: Conversion rate is crucial because it tells you how successful your website is in turning visitors into customers. It also helps identify which traffic sources are sending the best visitors who end up doing what you want on your site.

4. Traffic Sources:

Businesses use different ways to bring people to their websites, which are called traffic sources. Understanding traffic sources helps see where your visitors come from and how it changes over time. Organic search traffic, usually from search engines like Google, is often the biggest source for many businesses. If you make your website better for search engines, it can also help increase visitors from other sources like social channels, emails and referrals.

Common traffic sources measured in Web Analytics include:  

• Organic search: The user came from an organic — meaning unpaid — listing on a search engine results page.
• Direct: The user came directly to your site, such as by typing your URL into their browser
• Paid: The user came from an ad on a search engine results page.
• Social: The user came from a link on a social network.
• Referral: The user came from a link on another website.

Importance: Understanding the traffic source can help you optimise your marketing effort for that channel, thus saving your valuable time and resources.

5. Device:

It's important to know from where the people come from and what devices do they use to visit a website. This tells you how to design the content better for them.

Importance: If most people come to your site using their mobile phones, you might want to create content that looks good and works well on mobile devices.

6. Top Landing Pages:

Top landing pages are the pages on your website that get the most visitors. Sometimes, you might have a page that gets lots of visitors because it shows up first when someone searches for something, but that might not bring many people who do what you want on your site. That's why it's crucial to track these top landing pages.

Importance: You can see how much traffic your pages get and then make them even better to get more people to do what you want on your website. For instance, if a popular page isn't leading to many people doing what you want (like buying something or signing up), you can make changes to encourage more actions from your visitors, making your website more effective.

7. Session Duration:

Session Duration is a key web analytics metric that refers to the length of time a user spends on a website during a single visit or session. It measures the period between the initial entrance to the website and the exit, calculating the time spent actively engaged with the content.

Importance: A longer session duration often indicates higher engagement, suggesting that visitors find the content valuable and are exploring the website thoroughly. However, shorter durations might imply quick exits or less interest in the content.

8. Top Exit Pages:

An exit page is the final page a visitor views before leaving a website. While some exit pages naturally mark the end of a visitor's journey, tracking top exit pages can uncover opportunities for site improvements to enhance user experience.

Importance: Identifying these exit pages can highlight areas where visitors commonly decide to leave, prompting considerations for updates or optimizations to keep users engaged and encourage them to explore further within the website.

9. Social Channels

Today 67% of small businesses value social media as a top digital marketing tool. Social referrals represent the traffic directed to a website from organic or paid social media sources. This metric serves as a website engagement indicator, offering insights into a significant segment of the buyer journey.

Importance: Understanding how users from social platforms engage with the website helps you tailor your marketing strategies and optimise the user experience for this specific audience segment.

10. Average Keyword Positions

The average keyword position indicates the typical ranking of a page on a search engine results page (SERP) for a particular keyword. Google Search Console is an important tool to track average keyword position. This integration allows you to view insights on keyword positions and optimize your website's pages to enhance their performance in search engine rankings.

Importance: Monitoring your top pages' average keyword positions is valuable as it reveals which pages align well with visitors' search intent and identifies areas for improvement.