Website analytics are a vital business tool – but what are they, and why are they so important?
If you hear the word ‘analytics’ and feel a little intimidated, you’re not alone. The mere mention conjures up images of lots of graphs and numbers – certainly not everyone’s cup of tea.
Analytics are vital for your online business as they ‘enable you to better understand your site visitors and use those insights to improve the experience on your site’ (Hubspot). However, Google Analytics (and other analytics tools) can be a lot to take in, especially if you are just starting out. Seeing all this data crammed into one big report, you may wonder where to start or what some of these numbers mean. We’ve put together a list of some of the key metrics we believe are the most important to understand and track, so that it can feel a little less daunting.
1. New Users
This will be one of the first analytics you should see on your dashboard, and a key indicator of how busy your site has been! You can view this number for a singular date, or choose a range of dates to view a particular time period. It’s important to look specifically at New Users as this tells you how many people have visited your site for the first time, rather than all of the traffic that has been through your site. You could expect this number to be larger if you have any marketing out that is encouraging click throughs to your website as the call to action.
2. Bounce Rate
This is typically an ‘insight’ on your analytics rather than a main statistic, but is incredibly important to monitor and track. The Bounce Rate tells you how quickly people are leaving your website after going onto it. The optimal range for Bounce Rate is between 26% and 40%, with the average being between 50% and 70%. A low Bounce Rate indicates that your website is engaging and that people are clicking through pages, whereas a high Bounce Rate shows that people are leaving your site fairly quickly and not engaging with any content.
3. Engagement Time
In relation to Bounce Rate, Engagement Time is another key metric to keep a track of because it shows the average amount of time people are spending on your website. You will likely find that a low Engagement Time will relate to a high Bounce Rate, as people aren’t spending time exploring what your site has to offer. Engagement Time over one minute is a good sign that people are reading some of your content rather than leaving immediately.
4. Traffic Sources
Another great analytic to track is where your traffic is coming from. Your Traffic Sources can tell you if marketing campaigns are successful if you have high traffic from Paid Search or Social, or if you have great links from other sites if traffic comes from Direct.
5. Top Pages
It is incredibly likely that your top page will be your Home Page, as it will typically be the first page people click onto (unless you are promoting another page elsewhere), but it is still important to see where else people are visiting on your site. You can filter your Top Pages to sort by session time, amount of users or engagement rate.
These analytics should help you begin to better understand what is going on with your website, and how your potential customers behave!
Not sure if you’ve got the time to wrap your head around all this? FoodE makes analytics simple, with clearly presented data focused on what YOU need to maximise your store’s potential. No complicated menus or confusing tools, just easy to understand reporting and suggestions. Book a demo today to find out for yourself!