Analytics is not a report you file. It is the only honest account of what visitors do on your site, and it is free.
Analytics is not a report you file. It is the only honest account of what visitors do on your site.
Opinions about a website are cheap. Everybody has one. The data is the part that settles the argument.
Three numbers change how you spend money
Where visitors come from. Google, Facebook, a directory, an ad, or a link on somebody else's page. This tells you which channel earns its budget and which one you are funding out of habit.
Which pages lose people. A page with a high exit rate is a page that fails to answer the question that brought the visitor there. That is a writing problem, not a design problem, and you can fix it in an afternoon.
How many visitors act. A call, a form, a purchase, a download. Traffic without action is a vanity number. Actions are the only number that pays a wage.
Bounce rate is the fastest diagnostic you have
A visitor lands on a page and leaves without doing anything else. One page with a high bounce rate tells you that page is wrong. Every page with a high bounce rate tells you the site is slow, or the traffic is wrong.
Check the load speed first. It is the most common cause and the easiest fix.
The set-up takes an afternoon
Install a tracking code. Google Analytics is free. Set up two or three goals that match real business events, such as a submitted contact form or a completed order.
Then leave it alone for a month. One week of data proves nothing.
Read it monthly, not daily
Daily numbers move for reasons that do not matter. Month over month, and the same month last year, are the two views that show a trend.
Look for one thing to change each month. Change it. Check it next month. That loop beats a redesign.
I set up analytics for clients and read the numbers with them every month. Email jon@delcaromedia.com if you want to see what your site is already telling you.