Many of the business owners I speak with are proud of the high visitor volumes recorded by their websites. However, raw visitor numbers are not the only metric that website owners should study when determining how effective their online marketing efforts currently are.
In my experience, the real value of this figure – particularly for small businesses with limited budget and manpower – is found by looking at the surrounding context: who is visiting your website, where they are coming from, and how they’re choosing to interact with your content. The mark of a good digital marketing agency is its ability to build informed strategies based on this information.
Interpreting online traffic
Fortunately, there are a wealth of tools at your disposal that will enable you to turn raw data into contextual information. One of the most widely used platforms is Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is the go-to platform for any web marketing professional worth their salt, providing you with all the information you could ever need about the habits of your website visitors. If you’ve never used Google Analytics before or find the interface confronting, I’d suggest you start by checking out the “Acquisition Overview” section, which contains data that will illuminate where your website traffic is coming from. Direct traffic, referrals, organic search, paid advertisements, email, and social media marketing – it’s all there.
I couldn’t recommend Google Analytics more, particularly for small businesses with limited marketing budgets.
Defining a lead
Step two is determining the type of traffic you are receiving. Be aware that your website is likely to receive spam traffic. Bots are not usually harmful to your online presence unless you count them as legitimate visitors to your site. In that case, spam can skew your data and cause you to make ill-informed marketing decisions.
Fortunately, filtering spam traffic in Google Analytics is fairly easy. Simply go to your Admin settings, select ‘View settings’ on the left-hand panel and click the box that states ‘exclude all hits from known bots and spiders’.
It’s also worth using Google Analytics to check where your visitors are coming from. If your business is tied heavily to your location, your traffic must come from your local area. A restaurant based in Melbourne doesn’t have a lot of use for online visitors from Paris.
How is your website converting?
The next step is looking at our conversion rate.
Hopefully, you have some mechanism in place to track conversions. If you’re yet to set a tracking tool up, good old Google Analytics will certainly do the job for you.
Next, be clear (in your own mind and from a user perspective) about what you define as a call-to-action. In the case of our pizza shop example, a call-to-action might be placing an online order. Tracking how many visitors complete these actions and dividing this number by the total number of visitors to your site will illustrate how effective your website is at converting traffic.
Be aware that many websites have a low conversion rate, around three per cent. If this is true for you, don’t be too concerned. However, it’s worth looking further into user behaviour to understand whether specific barriers prevent your customers from engaging in the manner you would hope.
Look beyond the raw numbers
Few tools are as effective at driving new customers as a website. However, figures like traffic numbers don’t fully illustrate how effective (or ineffective) your website currently is. If you’re concerned about your online presence or believe you could be doing more to attract and convert relevant leads, it’s well worth speaking to professional development and digital marketing agency to tailor a data-driven strategy. Good luck!
