What should website analytics actually tell you?

The online market is expanding. Studies show that there are 1.09 billion websites on the internet. However, not all websites are active and are performing well. While some brands consider websites as their brand’s face, others use them as a business card - built once, left unattended.

But how do you keep your website running so you can have more people visiting your site and converting into your clients and users? You just need to analyze it regularly and keep making improvements. This blog helps you learn about website analytics and tells you the website metrics that are important to you.

What is website analytics?

Website analytics means analyzing your website. It is learning and understanding where people come from, how they arrive, what they click, where they drop, and how they engage. This gives clarity about how your website is performing and what changes you need to make to make it better.

It tracks four important things for you:

• The source from which the visitors come to the website.

• Engagement they make on the website, including which page they spend time on, and how they interact

• Problems they face on the pages because of complexities and other issues that make them drop off the site.

• Outcomes of the visits that lead to form submission, sales, and more.

Why is it important to analyze your website?

If you want your website to do more than just be your digital visiting card, you need to see how it is performing and how you can improve it. However, decisions without data can cost you time, effort, and even money. With website analytics, you can see what’s working, what’s wasting, and what to do next.

1. You see what works for you

   Website analytics can help you identify the channels, pages, and messages that drive sign-ups, leads, or sales. You review the source and focus on the areas that are working for you.

2. You fix what breaks your brand

   A thorough analysis helps you find issues that stop visitors from completing tasks. You can find the core website vitals, broken links, forms, and device/browser errors. With this information, you can fix the high-impact errors and keep your website seamless.

3. You convert visitors smartly

   You can put your website to work and help it bring in your customers. You can improve how well existing traffic turns into outcomes by making smart decisions from the detailed website analysis.

4. You align your team and improve ROI

   Decisions backed by the website analytics data will help you give marketing, product, and sales a shared view of results. This will help you make more profit and get a good ROI.

What website metrics should you track?

If you plan to analyze your website, here is a quick scoreboard to help you get started. Here are some metrics you need to track.

• Page visits: Page visits are the number of visits happening on each website page. It shows real demand for that page without being inflated by reloads. Use it to see if interest is rising or falling and to judge whether improvements actually brought more visitors.

• Bounce rates: When you keep a track of the number of visitors, you should also keep a track of the people who immediately leave the site. That is called bounce rate. A spike in bounces usually points to a mismatch between expectation and reality. This could be low page speed, weak headline, irrelevant content, or sometimes click fraud on ad landing pages. This will help you understand and fix issues.

• Average time spent on page: The average time spent on your website pages is another important metric you should track. It tells you if the page holds attention for its job. Longer isn’t always better; long guides should hold attention, but pricing or checkout pages should be quick. If time is low and results are weak, your key message or CTA may be too far down, or the content isn’t easy to scan. These metrics will help you see what you need to fix.

• Average session duration: This is another website metric that is similar to the average time. This is the average time a visitor spends on your site in one visit. If the duration drops, people may struggle to find things.

• Traffic source: It is important to know where your audience is coming from. It can be the social media platforms, the ads or organically on the search engines.

• User type: The user type tells you the kind of users visiting you. They can be new users or existing users. New users need clear introductions and simple next steps. Returning users normally convert faster and need fewer explanations. You can make changes to your website to engage with the users properly.

• Device type: See how people browse and from which device they are using. It could be a tablet, a mobile, or a laptop. With this, you can analyze how your device is performing across each device interface. Mobile usually brings more traffic, but struggles with forms and slow pages. Fix speed, simplify navigation, and reduce form fields on mobile to lift conversions.

• Page-wise traffic: This shows which pages attract visitors, where they enter, and where they exit. With this data and information, you can see why a certain page works and why a certain page does not. For pages with high exit rates, you can fix the complex sections and make them better.

• Session tracking: Are the numbers enough? How about watching what the users do? Some website analytics tools record the sessions of your visitors and show you exactly what they do on your site. This gives you full clarity on what they do on your site. It helps you see where people hesitate, rage-click, or face errors so you can improve them quickly.

• Conversion rates: This is the percentage of visitors who complete key actions on the website. This includes form submissions, sign-ups, purchases, and more. You can track both macro conversions (sales) and micro conversions (add to cart, start checkout) to see exactly where people drop off. Segment by channel, device, and page to improve what is working for you and fix what is not.

• Core website vitals: The website metrics include tracking the following core website vitals.

1. How fast does your website page loads

2. How fast the site responds to interactions.

3. Other factors that show faster, stable pages keep people engaged and help SEO.

• Keyword performance

This shows which search queries your pages appear for, along with impressions, average position, and click-through rate. With the right data, you can improve titles and meta descriptions for low-CTR keywords, strengthen content for keywords where you rank on page one but not in the top spots, and create pages for queries you’re missing.

Go beyond numbers with WEMASY’s Analytics & Insights tool

Go beyond numbers with WEMASY’s Analytics & Insights tool. It has a privacy-safe session recording that shows real user journeys. This is one clear place to see traffic sources, engagement, entry/exit pages, and conversion outcomes. Our smart filters and focused dashboards make it easy to diagnose issues by device, campaign, and more. Try it for your website and see how you can use the data to get the real insights for your brand.