It’s time to suit-up and grease the wheels of your small business website. First step, let’s look at your website stats to set benchmarks to increase website visitors. Without putting an ear to the ground and reading the tea leaves of your website stats, you can’t possibly know where your website is succeeding or failing. A comprehensive review of your website’s stats will paint a clear picture on what needs to be fine-tuned to improve the functionality, search engine ranking and effectiveness of your site.
The following key website stats will help you form a baseline for your small business website. Future site updates can then be compared against this benchmark to accurately gauge success, identify problem areas, trends, and ultimately increase website visitors.
Search Terms And Keywords
Search keyword reports are powerful tools for identifying exact words and terms visitors are plugging into search engines to find your small business website. Keyword website stats reports will help you fine-tune your website content, Meta and HTML Keyword Tags, and spot non-technical or unexpected terms visitors are using to find you.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate gives you insight into the quality of website content on individual web pages of your site. Expressed in terms of a percent, bounce rate calculates how often a visitor lands on an individual page of your website and either: 1) leaves your website immediately, or 2) spends a brief amount of time on that page, but doesn’t continue to any other page of your small business website. The lower the bounce rate, the better that page of your website is at enticing visitors to check out other pages of your website. Ideally, you’ll want your bounce rate website stats in the 20% range, but 70% is not uncommon for generic landing pages.
Referring Websites And External Links
Is your online listing with the local chamber of commerce or business directory sending you visitors? Referral reports will identify what websites your visitors are coming from and how they got to you. With these referral website stats, you’ll be able to determine what other small business websites are linking to you and if online networking and advertising is producing results. Boost your efforts in areas that are working to increase website visitors.
Visitor Paths
Just like a roadmap, site path reports generate a turn-by-turn analysis on where visitors entered, what they viewed while on your small business website, and where they left. These websites stats are helpful in identifying valuable content, as well as improving your marketing to each stage of the buying process.
Most Visited Website Pages
What pages are most popular? Pretty much self-explanatory, these website stats compile individual page data to rank their popularity amongst site visitors. Upon close inspection, this information will help you adjust site navigation, reposition lesser-viewed content and products, and leverage your company’s specialization in niche markets.
Time On Site
Another fairly self-explanatory website stat, the amount of time a visitor spends on individual web pages, and on your website as a whole, is very important. You want to keep visitors on your small business website as long as possible. Use time statistics as a guide for improving content on individual pages, and as a yardstick to boosting your overall website’s conversion rates.
How To Use Website Stats
After spending some time reviewing your website stats, start looking deeper into problem areas. Use website stats and other traffic information to determine the effectiveness of your website content, and plot out where you can improve your website to increase website visitors. You’ll want to review how content is structured. Is it logical? Does it move the prospect one step forward towards giving you a call or buying your product? Is it in line with how your visitors are actually using your site (review your website stats Visitor Path reports discussed above)? Is site navigation simple to use?
Tell us what you think! We’d really like to hear your comments! Give us a piece of your mind and fire away with any questions you have about how to review your website stats. And be sure to check out some of our other great small business marketing articles. Thank you for reading!
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Interesting article.
How does one track the information?
Phil,
Most web hosting companies provide statistics tracking software as part of their monthly service. At Formulis we use SmarterStats. But it may also make sense to enable other tracking software. Google Analytics is an excellent free option that gives a great overall picture of how people are finding, using and searching for your website. For more information on increasing search engine rank and additional tools to track your website and identify keywords, take a look at my other article: Increase Search Engine Rank