What Visitor Activity Are You Tracking?

Website stats software packages generate much more information than one can reasonably track every month.

So it’s important to focus on those stats that will directly impact your sales.

Our Top Ten Measurements

We track 10 key factors that relate to where visitors come from, what they do, and whether they take actions that will lead to a sale or lead.

Source of Traffic

• Top Acquisition Sources — Use Google Analytics to monitor the site’s conversion rates from the various sources of traffic. These sources are generally grouped into these categories: Direct traffic – people coming directly to the site; Organic Search – people coming from unpaid search listings; Referral Traffic – visitors arriving from other non-search websites; Email Marketing Campaigns, Social Networks and Paid Search. To effectively measure marketing campaigns use our campaign tracking URL builder tool.
• Search Keywords and Phrases — Identifying the words your prospects are most likely to use to find your site is critical when optimizing website content. Don’t assume you know what keywords your visitors use to locate your website. Set up a free Google Webmaster Tools account and monitor the search queries that people typed into its search engine that drove clicks to your website. And research new keyword phrases using other keyword tools.
• New vs. Returning Visitors — A high percentage of repeat visitors may indicate that your marketing is not attracting enough new visitors to the site. Review your online marketing programs: are you running PPC ads? If not, why not? PPC can be cost-effective and the ad can be running quickly once you establish what keywords to target.

On-Site Activity

• Page Views Per Visit — If prospects only view one or two pages before leaving, that can indicate that the site is not meeting their needs. Four or more pages per visit indicate that prospects are finding the site compelling enough to explore in more depth.
• Visit Length — How long on average did your prospects stay on the site? Visits of less than one minute indicate that the site is not meeting prospects needs. Take a critical look at your homepage design: maybe it doesn’t effectively lead visitors into the site.
• Navigation Path Analysis — Examining how visitors move through the site can help determine if there are any navigational “road blocks” or if there are ways to reduce the number of clicks it takes to find frequently accessed information.
• Single Page Visits and Homepage Abandonment — Any page where a visitor enters the site at that page and then directly exits the site is a page that should be looked at closely, as it’s likely the visitor did not find what they were looking for. Also check to see if your visitors are arriving at 404 Error pages and then leaving.

Measure Site Conversions and Effectiveness of Call-To-Actions

• Set Up Conversion Tracking — Set up Conversion tracking in your analytics software to measure the effectiveness of the site’s call-to-actions and any other activities on your site that are important to the success of your business.
• Registration Page Bounce Rates — Evaluate how many prospects land on registration pages relative to the number that complete that registration page and receive the “thank you” page. If the majority are reaching that page but then not taking the desired action, it’s time to re-think your registration requirements!
• Downloads — Measure how often prospects are downloading white papers, signing up for Webinars and taking other actions that will lead to sales.

Search Engine Rankings

• Measure, measure, measure — Measure your website rankings for at least your top 50 search phrases compared to your competitors. Ranking change over time and your rankings will be affected by other sites making changes to their website.

→  Download:  9 Quick Wins to Instantly Boost Leads

Establish Website Relaunch Goals that you can Measure and Manage

What is a measurable goal?

A goal must be measurable: for example, 200 qualified leads in the next 30 days or gross product sales of $15 million in the next quarter.

Learn more about this topic through the Web Analytics Association.