At Volute we give all our customers a monthly report, outlining key performance statistics regarding their website. It helps to give them an idea of who is and isn’t visiting their website and what areas you might need to change or improve.
It’s important to take time to really understand your website analytics and consider them in the context of your business and customer base; what might be a negative for one website could be seen as a positive for another.
Here’s just a few metrics explained:
What devices are people using to visit your website?
Nowadays there are more sessions on the web using mobile devices, than traditional desktop computers and laptops. A heavy proportion of users on desktops can be a key indicator that your website might not be working as well on mobile devices.
When looking at device statistics, you really need to be considering the sectors you’re targeting; if you’re in the B2B space, you’ll often find a preference for desktops and laptops rather than mobile devices as these are what people use throughout the day. For a consumer-focused business, however, it is vital for you to be hitting the mobile audience, as so much web surfing and product buying is done from the bus home from work, or the sofa while watching TV.
What pages are people visiting most?
Of course, your homepage is often where people land, but where do they go after this? Have a look at your most popular pages, as it might surprise you where people are attracted to on your website. For the Volute website, the About Us page is one of our most popular pages, so we try to put some of the most important information there.
It’s worth asking the question of why people go to the pages that they do. The placement of a button might be encouraging people to click it, or maybe it’s a linked image or a footer menu.
Bounce rate
This is a simple metric to understand; it’s the percentage of people visiting just one page on your website, before navigating away. The importance of this depends on the design of your site, how content is structured and the purpose for it.
If you want people to dig around the website, and you’ve got a high bounce rate, you’ll really want to look into why people aren’t sticking around. It might be reconsidering the layout, where buttons and your menu are, and the text and linking to make clicking through more enticing.
How are visits trending?
Have a look at the trending graph; it gives you an idea of when your site has been more or less popular across the month. If you have any traffic spikes, it might be worth trying to identify the reason behind it. Maybe you put a new blog post on your site, or you posted something on social media driving people to your website.
You might have sent an email newsletter out that day or met new people at a networking event. It could also be external factors influencing views too; for example, an accountancy firm may find more visitors to their site around the time when tax returns are due.
If you want a greater insight into how your website performs, get in touch with us to find out how we can help.
Existing customer not receiving analytics reports? Speak to us today and we’ll get it set up straight away, at no cost.