I’m always amazed at how many websites I come across that are not using website analytics or any kind of site monitoring software. In fact most servers and hosting services at least have some sort of statistical software installed by default. It’s usually something like Webalizer which is very basic, but it’s at least a start. I put together a list of the top 5 reasons why you should be using website analytics to hopefully shed some light on why analytics are so important.
- You can’t measure what you don’t know. This is probably the most obvious and important reason for website analytics on the list. Everyone who has a business always wants to know the ROI (return on investment). Well, how do you measure website ROI if you have no idea what is happening on the site. Without someway to track, record and report the number of visitors to the website and their engagement level you including various metrics such as, source, referring sites, pageviews and time on site, you really have no way of knowing if your site is working to promote your business. Furthermore you have no way of knowing how to improve your website so it does benefit the business.
Track traffic sources that bring visitors to your website. How are people getting to your site. Are they using search engines, finding you through social media portals, referring sites or some other source. This is a great way to see if your multi-platform campaigns are working. Is your engagement on other websites and platforms online driving traffic back to your site? Traditional media can also be tracked with website analytics. Often changes and spikes can be seen in the site metrics when a website is mentioned in a traditional media source. For example if a radio advertisement that mentions the website is run for day you will hopefully see a spike in the direct traffic metric of your analytics.- Track what search engines and keywords are driving traffic to your site. Using website analytics you can see what keywords are using to find you and across what search engines. This is very important if you are running any kind Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaigns as well as a way to judge how your site is doing organically. You can even drill further down into the site metrics to see exactly how a visitor engages with your site when find you through search particular keywords. Some key metrics are pages/visit, average time on site and bounce rate. You can then see what keywords you should target for the best results.
- Track what content is being viewed. You can what content is viewed and measure how much and how often through pageviews, landing pages and top content. The exit pages ad bounce rate are also very important metrics to measure if your content is good or not. High bounce rates or exit rates on a particular page is a good indication that visitors are do not find the page to be useful.
- Track sales funnels and conversions. This is the most complex reason, but also hugely important. You can set up sales funnels or goals that you would like your visitors to navigate and track the results. You can see where visitors enter and fall out of the goal funnel. This can be a huge help for identifying problems and improving your conversions.
This list only scratches the surface of what is possible with website analytics. If you don’t have analytics on your site now, getting it set up should be a top priority. The great thing is, you can use Google Analytics to monitor your website and it’s free! If you don’t have the time or inclination to do it yourself we can help with our website analytics solutions.
