Website traffic matters. Sure, you want to know HOW MUCH traffic you get – but what does that tell you about site visitors? Think of it like actual traffic – you see lots of people on the road, but you don't know why or where they're going. To learn more about the people driving into your site, you must navigate a bit deeper into Google Analytics.
Now, if your brain just shut down at "Google Analytics" – feel safe to reboot. Yes, it seems big and scary and uses words you don't know. But you can fix that, and you have to. When you understand these four ways of looking at your traffic (metrics), you can make site changes that impact your ROI.
Bounce Rate This tells you the percentage of people who landed on a particular page and immediately left without visiting another. They came. They saw. They bounced. Why did they skip town so quickly? Take a hard look at your content. Rework it so more visitors find what they're hunting or consider adding a call-to-action that guides them before they bounce.
Source/Medium All traffic has a vehicle – medium (organic, CPC, referral, etc.) and comes from a starting point – source (google, direct, or Facebook, etc.). Are you running marketing campaigns? Knowing which vehicle brings visitors to your site helps you make effective marketing choices. Consider this: if bounce rates for paid traffic run sky-high, the content may not meet visitor expectations. Adjust the content or the ads.
Site Content/Landing Pages See the first pages site visitors hit. Do these pages fit your goals? Use the secondary dimension of Default Channel Grouping (groups of similar mediums) to see how visitors arrived. Do you have organic traffic landing on stray pages? Beef up search terms on other pages to adjust those search results.
Site Content/All Pages Rank your pages by pageviews. Right away, you learn how long people spend on a page, plus bounce and exit rates. (Exit rate: percentage of traffic leaving from a page.) Higher time on a page usually means the content works. Try to replicate that content approach on lower-performing pages. High exit rates can mean 1) visitors get what they need and leave or 2) pages aren't useful. Much like bounce rate, improve this by making sure visitors find the information they expect.
We all agree: traffic is excellent, but not all traffic is equal. It's time to stop counting cars and start gathering the insights needed to maintain a functional and results-driven website.
Still not sure you want to travel this road? No worries. Reach out and let's talk about moving you forward.
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