Surprisingly many business owners have never (yes, never) even checked their website traffic. Even if you don’t sell your products or services directly through your website, it’s likely the place which prospective customers go to learn about your company. That being said, website traffic could be a factor to your sales forecasting.
Many web hosting companies provide some form of website traffic analytics, my personal preference however is Google Analytics. It’s a free product from Google, easy to implement and provides a ton of great information about your website traffic.
A few areas to focus on at the beginning should be:
Visits - The number of people who view your website during a given timeframe.
Overall, this is a pretty high level view of the usage and popularity of your website. A number which you should review regularly to ensure you’re continually growing traffic on your website.
Pages - The traffic specific to each page on your website.
Some pages are more popular than others. It’s important to know which pages are driving the majority of the traffic to your website, and which are causing the most exists. You can also see how long visitors stay on specific pages and the bounce rate of each page. Here is a quick tip, if you see a certain style of blog performing better than others, consider producing more of that style content.
Traffic Sources - Where your website visitors are coming from.
Is it search, social or links from other websites which are providing the majority of your incoming traffic? It’s important to know where your visitors are coming from. Are your social media efforts working, and providing your with the traffic you expect? Do specific blog posts drive more traffic from search engines? Try to find trends in your traffic sources.
Automated Reporting - Automatically receive emailed traffic reports.
Once you determine what you would like to watch, have reports emailed to you automatically. Set how often you would like reports sent to you, and have them delivered right to your inbox. If nothing else, it will at least remind you to check your website traffic analytics.
Traffic isn’t the only factor to see success online, your website must still be effective enough to convince your visitors to do business with you. But keep these tips in mind so you don’t lose track of how your website’s traffic is performing.
Review Your Website’s Traffic Lately?
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