When talking about analyzing the performance of a website, people usually use web analytics software. There are many web analytics software available to use, but when explaining a site's performance in overall, we need to see a bigger picture.
Web analytics are indeed important for web owners and webmasters. They provide the measurements, collections, analysis and reporting of web data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage. With the information they have to give, people can understand how their websites are performing it terms of exposure.
Just about every online business or any businesses with a website uses an analytics tool to track their traffic data. Despite being used more than plenty, there are many people who weren't taking the full advantage of their analytics reports. Some even don't know how to.
A business on the web should be able to interpret the analytics data by leveraging information so they can decrease bounce rate and exit rates, and to make sales increase.
But when it comes to analytics, marketers are often overwhelmed by the massive data. While all data are indeed shown for a reason, to eliminate the confusion, you may focus on some most important ones, then rely on them to answer the questions other analytics data are trying to provide.
Below is a list describing types of analytics you should be monitoring, and the way you can use the data to improve conversion rates and sales.
Sources of Traffic
Your web visitors have to come from somewhere, and here is where web analytics come in handy. Before looking at your site's conversation rate, you need to know where your visitors are coming from, and what device they use.
When the mobile trend rises, more people are accessing the web with their mobile devices. It's critical to understand which devices are being used to access your website. And when seeing where your users come from, you'll get an insight about which market you're able to penetrate, how you succeed in doing so, and why that market is reached.
The point of knowing where your visitors come from and what device they use is essential because with the data, you'll know who were your referrals, and whether visitors are coming from social media or search engines (paid/organic).
Knowing where your web traffic came from can help you understand where to invest more time and money to increase even more traffic. You can also use the information to focus on marketing campaigns for specific regions/devices, and understand why some of your efforts don't convert.
Landing Page
Your website's pages are available for the web to see. From the referrals data and the traffic sources, you will need to know what pages were your visitors' landing pages. Know which are the pages, and why your visitors visited them?
You may have links scattered throughout the web, you may use backlink strategy for referral traffic. You may use social media networks for exposure and other many marketing efforts to get the words out. Understanding which pages are the best landing pages allow you to understand which marketing strategy succeeded and which didn't.
This in turn allows you to know which strategy should be maintained and which should be improvised. By knowing which pages are performing well and why they're doing what they're expected to be, you can then perfect those pages.
Further reading: Creating a High Conversion Landing Page
User Flow and Bounce Rate
When your web visitors are visiting your website, they came for a reason. Take a look at your analytics data to understand what phrase/keyword they input in order to get to your website. This information will allow you to get an insight about which targeted keywords were performing well, and which didn't.
After getting to know how visitors came to your website, then you proceed to understanding which pages of your website they have visited. Visitors may click on links on a landing page to get to more pages, understand the flow in order to get their interest. This in turn will make you understand the reasons behind your bounce rate.
Bounce rates indicate the moment you're losing customers. Look at which pages have the lowest bounce rate and which have the highest. Look at their differences and get to know the reasons.
Related: Bounce Rate and Successful SEO Campaign
Pages with high bounce rates can indicate a problem with the information, links, layout or call to actions. You may also have too many outbound links or have a slow loading page. Use bounce rates as a initial indicator of problem pages.
Getting to know your visitors flow and bounce rate can help you create better pages.
Engagements
Every landing page should have a call-to-action feature. This can be a button to submit, a button to subscribe, a form a shopping cart, or anything in between.
When it comes to online conversion rates and lead generation, you can use in-page analytics to learn which of your call-to-action features are producing the best results on your web pages.
For example, with analytics data you can know which web pages are driving the most clicks. With that information, you can answer the question why some of your call-to-actions are more effective than others. Is it because of their placement? Their design? Or because the relevancy of the feature against the page's content.
By using this data, you can further hone your messages to increase conversions based on the practices that work best.
Beyond this, you should also understand what people are doing on your pages. What links did they clock? Where are they hovering? What attracted the most attention, and what confused them.
Mouse-move heatmap comes in handy to answer this question. Mouse-move heat maps show you where people hover and move across your pages. This information can help you learn whether users find your site intuitive. Click heat mapping tools can visualize the exact locations where visitors' cursors clicked on your website. This information can be useful in identifying usability or navigation issues.