What Web Analytics Metrics Should I Pay Attention To?

It often happens that users who log in to Google Analytics for the first time feel frustrated with numerous charts, numbers and menu items. No need to worry. In today’s article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about web analytics key metrics.

If you are new to Google Analytics, then you better start with tracking some basic numbers. Scroll down and see the list of the top five metrics you should be looking at on a regular basis.

5 Critical Web Analytics Metrics to Follow

Website Visitors

First, focus on unique visitors. These are users who have visited your resource at least once during a specific timeframe. For example, if person A visited your website once during the past week and person B visited the site ten times during the same period, in the end, you will have two unique visitors and total 11 visits. These numbers are vital since they represent the size of your audience.  

As soon as you get a handle on tracking website’s unique visitors, you can start tracking the repeat visits. If their number is growing, this means your site is useful and attractive, or “sticky,” as marketers love to say.  

Referrals Report

The next thing you should do is consider where your website visitors come from. To get the answer, you should look at referrals report. Referrals track your potential clients as they click on links in search engine, other websites, blogs or social networks.

Understanding of where your traffic is coming from is crucial for determining what else is needed for better website promotion. The referrals report can also be applied to find other sites that you might consider forging a stronger relationship with.

Bounce Rate

A “bounce” is when the user visits your site and instantly clicks the back button or just closes the browser tab. Usually, this means that the person didn’t find what he was looking for after what decided to leave.

Reducing the bounce rate is critical since every lost visitor is a lost opportunity. In most cases, content and navigation improvement solves the high bounce rate problem.

Exit Pages

Bounces and exits are often confused, even though these two are different metrics for an analyst to measure. In contrast to “bounce,” when a visitor comes to your site and barely views one page, an “exit” is when the user comes to your site, visits several pages and then leaves.

Having a high exit rate may signal you have problems. Take a look at your pages with high exit rates and try to determine why do a large number of people leave your resource from that specific page.

Conversion Rate

Among all web analytics metrics you might track, the conversion rate is perhaps one of the most important. Conversion rate represents the percentage of users who have made a purchase, filled out a contact form, or viewed a certain page on your site. Simply put, those are visitors who have achieved their goals.

The conversion rate is the ultimate measure of how successful your site is. If your resource has a low conversion rate, you are either attracting the wrong audience, or your site is not effective at convincing people that you offer the right solution to their problem.

Start Small, Go Big

Web analytics and metrics can be tough. The key to avoiding drowning in the sea of charts, numbers and menu items is to start small. Choose a metric that matters to you and your business most and track it on a regular basis. Try to improve it, applying different marketing strategies. By focusing on one metric as you get started, you’ll get a better feel for the numbers. As you get comfortable, you can expand the web analytics metrics you track.