How to Measure the Quality of Website Traffic

Your web­site leaves the first impres­sion on poten­tial cus­tomers. It is impor­tant to under­stand how to mea­sure web­site traf­fic for your site because this will give a clear­er pic­ture of who your cus­tomers are, and how often they are shopping. 

Before we start — if you won­der what is web­site traf­fic, well, web­site traf­fic sim­ply refers to the num­ber of peo­ple who have seen your site, the pages that are viewed, and the num­ber of times your poten­tial con­sumers actu­al­ly vis­it your web­site. Each vis­it is record­ed and totaled to give you an idea of how pop­u­lar your site is. First, let’s begin with why it matters. 

Why Website Traffic Matters

Being able to attract vis­i­tors to a web­site is a small busi­ness own­ers bread and but­ter. When you think of a typ­i­cal brick and mor­tar store­front, a busi­ness own­er will want to attract cus­tomers to come in the store and make pur­chas­es. A web­site “store­front” uses the exact same con­cept, except it is applied online. 

You want to make sure your web­site is not get­ting lost in the vast sea of inter­net web­sites. And, if you are not attract­ing cus­tomers, you aren’t gen­er­at­ing sales. Your web­site traf­fic is direct­ly linked to the sur­vival of your business. 

Gen­er­at­ing tar­get­ed web­site traf­fic increas­es the like­li­hood of gen­er­at­ing more rev­enue. By under­stand­ing and tar­get­ing your demo­graph­ic, these tar­get­ed users will spend more time on your web­site and will refer to oth­er cus­tomers. The more time cus­tomers spend on your web­site, the greater the chances are that they will sign up for a newslet­ter, allow­ing you to mar­ket to them over the long run. 

The Basics of Measuring Website Traffic

There are a few tools avail­able mak­ing it easy to mea­sure the qual­i­ty of web­site traf­fic. One of the most pop­u­lar tools is Google Ana­lyt­ics, a web­site traf­fic mea­sur­ing ser­vice. Typ­i­cal­ly, a code is pro­vid­ed, which you will copy and paste into one of your web­site pages. You will need to fol­low the instruc­tions to know exact­ly where to place the code. 

After you’ve suc­cess­ful­ly applied the code, you will be able to view the web­site met­ric reports. Some­times, it takes a cou­ple of days to load and gath­er data to view. How­ev­er, once it is com­plete, you will be able to ana­lyze the sta­tis­tics that will include the num­ber of unique web­site vis­i­tors, links that were clicked, and land­ing pages. 

Anoth­er easy option to use is a web­site counter. Stat­Counter is a web­site traf­fic mea­sur­ing tool that allows own­ers to count the num­ber of users that vis­it their site. You have the option to spec­i­fy what sta­tis­tic you want to mea­sure. For exam­ple, you can indi­cate whether you’d like to mea­sure the num­ber of unique vis­i­tors to your site or how many times a par­tic­u­lar page is viewed. The col­or and for­mat can be cus­tomized to match your web­site style. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are endless!

Measuring Website Quality

Now that you know how to mea­sure web­site traf­fic, we can take a look at what qual­i­ty means for you. Cer­tain items to be aware of include lead con­ver­sion rate, geog­ra­phy, engage­ment on site, form sub­mis­sions, and bounce rate. 

• Lead con­ver­sion rate sim­ply refers to the per­cent­age of leads that become cus­tomers. This will indi­cate whether or not your cus­tomers are com­ing to your site and mak­ing pur­chas­es. Geog­ra­phy refers to the num­ber of local cus­tomers that are vis­it­ing your website. 
• Using Google ana­lyt­ics to run a geo-based report will give you a clear­er pic­ture of where your cus­tomers are com­ing from, and how to increase local traf­fic.
• Site engage­ment refers to the amount of time being spent on your web­site. Know­ing what links your cus­tomers are click­ing on pro­vides a clear­er pic­ture of how engaged they are. 
• Form sub­mis­sions help in gath­er­ing data on your cus­tomers so that you can tai­lor the expe­ri­ence for the tar­get demographic. 
• Last­ly, the bounce rate indi­cates the num­ber of peo­ple who vis­it your site and imme­di­ate­ly leave.

This is a quick run­down of how to mea­sure web­site traf­fic. Look­ing for more infor­ma­tion or just need help with improv­ing your web­site? We can do the heavy lift­ing, and get your web­site up to speed. Give us a call, today!