When it comes to checking and monitoring website stats in order to determine site performance, you will want to go deeper than just looking to see how many individual visitors your site brings in each day. There are many key statistics that can provide a deeper look into the performance of your site and allow for you to track trends and adjust your front end to take advantage of them. Anyone who creates and runs a website should keep regular track of the below statistics in order to fully understand how their site is performing on a day-to-day basis.
1. Total Views
Of course this one is a no-brainer, but your total page views are an important statistic and one that is used to determine the value and success of your page. Checking your page views trends will go a long way toward being able to evaluate the popularity of your site and spikes and ebbs in your site’s popularity level.
2. Unique Visitors
Even more than the total views, unique views are an essential statistic for your site. Total views do not give you a completely clear picture of your site’s performance due to the fact that multiple views by single visitors are counted as single clicks. This means that if one person viewed your site nine hundred times over the space of a month, those 900 views were recorded as individual visits. Therefore, total views do not give you a fully accurate view of how your site is performing. This is where unique visitors come into play. This statistic will tell you the exact amount of individual visitors who have checked out your site, which is of course an incredibly valuable stat for any business or website owner.
3. Time Spent On Site
Once you have your unique visitors, you should then break down the statistics to show the average amount of time that these individuals are spending on your site. If there are a lot of visitors that are staying on the page for only a couple of seconds, this means they were most likely not looking specifically for your site. They stumbled across it and clicked off as quickly as possible. On the other hand, if many individuals are spending long periods of time on the site, then this means they are being drawn in to your page and are staying to check out the content. This is what every website owner should be shooting for, which is why checking how much time visitors are spending on your site is so important.
4. Referrals
Now that you know the amount of visitors your site has been receiving and how long they are spending on your site, the next thing you will want to know is where they are coming from. The referral stats will show you which site they came from to reach your site. For example, if you are seeing Google as one of your main referral sites then this means that visitors are googling a subject and finding your site in the results. If you are selling a product or running a business, then this is a terrific development. If you are seeing a lot of visitors who are not coming in through other sites, then this means that individuals have your site in their favorites and are coming right to it for updates.
5. In-Site Activity
Once you understand how many individuals are visiting your site and where they are coming from, plus how long they are spending on your site, it is incredibly important to know what they are doing on your site during the visit. Most web hosting services will allow you to track these important website stats through heat maps and listed statistics, which you can check to track activity. You will be able to see which in-site links they are clicking on, if they are clicking on ads, and the individual pages within your site that are being visited. Now you will be able to see which content on your site is the most popular with visitors.
6. Regional Maps
It is always important to know where your visitors are coming from. Regional statistics will allow you to see which world regions the clicks are coming from. This way you can know where your brand, product, or your blog or promotional site are the most popular. For example, if you are selling a product and you start to see your visits from Japan increasing, now you know that your product is attracting interest in the Japanese market.
7. Devices Used
This useful statistic allows you to determine what type of devices are being used in order to access your site. You will be able to see if visitors are using smartphones, iPads, laptops, desktops, etc. and can track these trends. This is important for site owners since it allows adjustments to be made to the site to adapt to how viewers are seeing the page. If most of your visitors are viewing the site through smartphones, for example, then the design on the site should be made to work well with smartphone viewing platforms.
8. Conversion Rate
For sites that are selling a product, subscription, or other services, this is by far the most important metric to track. The conversion rate will let you know what percentage of your site’s visitors have made a purchase, signed up for a list, bought a subscription, etc. This means that you are converting these visitors into customers, making the conversion rate incredibly important.
9. Conversion By Traffic Source
A great way to get an idea of your customer’s demographics is to track conversions by traffic source. This will tell you which referral sites are bringing you the most paying customers. Therefore, if you have a lot of visitors coming in through social media sites who are being converted to customers, you will know that social media is playing a major role in your business.
There are many website stats that can be pulled up through hosting platforms, Google Analytics and various paid applications, but when it comes to the key useful stats then the above 9 will give you a great overview of your traffic, where your traffic is coming from, and how many of those visitors are being converted to customers.