Analytics Guide

You’ve finally done it: You’ve set up a website. Your products and services are now officially available to anyone who happens across them on the world wide web.
Now you can just sit back and wait for the money to roll in, right?

In an ideal world, of course, it’d be like the movie Field of Dreams. You’d build it, and they would come. But in the real world, you’ve got to do some work to build a customer base and attract an audience.

Fortunately, WebsiteBuilder has some great tools to help you get there. It has a built-in analytics dashboard, which helps you understand the people coming to your website and what they’re looking for.

By understanding the basics terms of your analytics dashboard, you can figure out what’s working on your site and what isn’t. And then you can do more of what works and quit doing what doesn’t.

Analytics helps answers three basic questions:

How many people are coming to your website (and how long are they staying)?

Total visits
The total number of times users navigate to your site. For example: if 10 users visited your site 10 times you would have 100 total visits.

Unique visitors
The total number of users that navigate to your site. For example: if 10 users visited your site 10 times you would have 10 unique visits.

A visit
A "visit" just means that someone---whether a unique visitor or not---came to your website, stayed for a while and then either left or "timed out." "Timed out" means they stopped interacting with the site (by clicking on links or product descriptions) for a certain period of time, usually more than 30 minutes.

If someone who timed out comes back---let’s say they just stepped away to get lunch or take a call---and starts clicking around again, then the tracker will count that as a new visit.

It won’t, however, count them as a new unique visitor, since they’ve already visited the site once before.

Page views
A page view is just that: a page of your site that has been viewed by someone. Within a single visit, a visitor may view several pages. Pages can include your homepage, your blog, your contact page, or any product page.

The more pages a visitor views during their time on your site, the better.

Average duration
This just tells you how long someone stayed on your site. The longer someone stays on your site, the better, as it suggests they’re really engaged with it, meaning they are clicking links, reading blog posts, or signing up for a newsletter.

Bounce rate:
The bounce rate refers to the percentage of customers who come to your website, stay for an indeterminate amount of time, and then leave without clicking on any other links. In the eyes of the analytics tracker, these users “bounced,” much like a ball hitting a wall.

(Fun fact: Analytics software can’t actually know how long someone stays at your website unless they click a link. For all they know, someone who “bounces” could have been there for 30 seconds, or they could have stared longingly at your home page for three hours. It’s only by clicking a link that the tracker is able to know, for sure, that they were there for however long elapsed between the time they arrived and the time they clicked that link.)

Typically, a high bounce rate suggests your website isn’t as engaging as it could be. After all, you want someone to hit your home page, and then mosey on over to your blog, or browse for a bit in your web store. You want them to hang around.

If your bounce rate is too high, consider re-writing the copy on your landing page. However, depending on your business, a high bounce rate may just mean that your visitors came to the home page and got what they needed---say, your hours of operation, or your phone number---and then skeedaddled without clicking a link.

How did they get to your site?

If you go down a little further on the analytics page, you’ll see a section titled "Traffic sources."

There are lots of different ways for someone to get to your site. For instance, they might have searched Google for a keyword associated with your business or blog. They may have clicked on a link on Twitter or Facebook. Or they may have just entered your site’s web address directly into their browser. (This last one is often called direct traffic.)

Organic traffic
Organic traffic means those visitors got to your site without any prompting from you. They found you on Google, read about you on another site, or saw mention of you on social media. They got to your website all on their own.

Paid traffic
Paid traffic, on the other hand, means those visitors got some kind of nudge from you (or an ad that you paid for). For instance, maybe you paid Google to display your website when users in a certain part of the world searched for certain keywords. Or perhaps you put up ads on Facebook.

If another website linked to you, then any traffic you get from that link is sometimes called referral traffic. That other site referred you to them.

What can you know about these visitors?

There’s only so much you can know from someone simply because they visited your website. But you can use what you can know to make certain assumptions about your visitors.

Browser
Browsers are the windows through which we all see the world wide web. They are the software applications that take all the code that makes up the Internet and translates it into all the cool images, text, and graphics you see on most websites.

Common browsers include Firefox, Google Chrome, Tor, Safari, and, for those still trapped in the 90s, Internet Explorer.

Safari is associated with Apple computers or iPhones, Google Chrome users skew younger and more tech-savvier, and Internet Explorer suggests someone who’s probably a little older and not super computer-literature.

Operating System
An operating system refers to the software that allows a computer to run applications and perform other functions. If someone has a PC, their operating system is likely Windows. If they have a Mac, then their operating system is going to be OS (operating system, get it?) X.

For those who reject the majors, they may have Linux. Several years ago, you might be able to make certain assumptions about people who had Macs (creative people with a cool design sense) versus people who had Windows (business people, students, anyone really into spreadsheets). However, these, days, enough people have Macs that it’s hard to really generalize.

Mobile vs Desktop
Some visitors may get to you by using a laptop or a desktop computer. They’ll show up in your analytics as “desktop” visitors.

Those who get to your website via their smartphone will show up as "mobile."

People who got there from an iPad or a Samsung tablet will show up as "tablet."

It’s helpful to know how people get to your website. If a lot of people find you via their phone, it suggests they’re searching for your business---or one like yours---while they’re out and about.

If they get to your site via a desktop computer, it suggests they’re doing research and being a bit more deliberate. It’s a helpful distinction that can give you insight into your prospective customers.

Visitor Geography
Now that you know how your customer is getting to your site (mobile or desktop), and on what device (a Mac or a PC), and with what browser (Firefox, Chrome, or Safari), it’s also helpful to know where in the world they are---literally.

Let’s say you’re a purely local business, but you’re getting traffic from the other side of the country---or even the world! That suggests that maybe you need to tend to your local SEO, and make sure your listings are all correct. It’s possible Google doesn’t really know where your business is located, and is showing it to the wrong people. That’d be silly!

But visitor geography can also let you know about untapped markets. If you run a shop, and have an online store, and find that you’re getting a lot of traffic from, say, some remote part of Canada.

It’s probably worth your time to research what exactly those Canadians find so intriguing about your site and your product. You could start focusing more of your marketing efforts on that region, or do a write up on your blog about how your product helps people there.

Regardless, analytics are the key that unlocks your marketing strategy

By paying attention to analytics, you can see who’s coming to your website, what they’re looking at, and which pages aren’t performing like you’d hoped. Using that, you can decide where to spend your precious time when it comes to digital marketing and website maintenance.