Website analytics is the process of tracking, collecting, measuring, and analyzing data to understand user behavior and monitor website performance.
Analytics gives e-commerce businesses data-driven insights into how users interact with their websites. By understanding website analytics, you’ll make informed decisions to enhance website performance and user experience.
In this article, we’ll explain:
- Why learning website analytics is a valuable investment of your time.
- The 10 essential website analytics you must focus on.
- How to choose the right website analytics tool.
- The four best practices for applying website analytics.
We also included a list of five website analytics tools for you to consider.
Yes, this article is a comprehensive read, BUT we made sure it’s easy to understand and follow.
Everything you need to learn to become proficient in website analytics is here!
Why You Need To Understand Website Analytics
Solving business problems through outdated information, guesswork, or intuition is risky. You need empirical evidence—real-time data—that track business performance to make objective decisions.
Website analytics is real-time data.
For a better understanding of why learning website analytics is a valuable skill, let’s discuss the following case study.
Case Study: E-Commerce – a Growth Industry with a High Failure RateE-commerce accounts for 19.4% and 15.9% of global retail sales and U.S. retail sales, respectively. Global e-commerce revenue is expected to grow from $6.01 trillion in 2024 to $8.9 trillion in 2030. There’s plenty of room for growth, but the risk of failure remains high. A study by Small Business Trends revealed that 90% of e-commerce businesses fail during the first four months. Ineffective digital marketing strategies (37%) and poor website optimization strategies (35%) were cited as the top two reasons for e-commerce business failure.
How will an e-commerce business know its digital marketing and website optimization strategies were flawed and hurting performance? By reviewing its website analytics. Website analytics gives you clues to the “why’s.” |
Understanding website analytics will give you insights into how users explore your website. Tracking user behavior allows for a deeper understanding of who your users are and how they interact with your website.
Website analytics provides insights into how to enhance user experience and improve search engine optimization strategies. You’ll identify potential pain points that could be costing you revenue.
Intuition could mislead you, but the numbers don’t lie.
With analytics, there’s no guesswork, only educated, data-driven decision-making.
A 3-Step Beginner’s Guide For Understanding Website Analytics
If you’re not a techie, don’t worry.
We’ve created this three-step guide for beginners and non-techies alike to understand what analytics is and how they can help your online business achieve success.
Remember, the learning curve is always steep in the beginning. With patience and consistency, the curve will eventually slope. You can always go back to this guide if you have questions.
To learn a skill, it’s a good idea to stick with the basics.
Step 1: The 10 Essential KPIs To Track Business Performance
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are benchmarks used to measure the effectiveness of a process in accomplishing a pre-determined goal.
Website analytics uses thousands of KPIs to measure user behavior and website performance, which would overwhelm beginners.
We have identified 10 essential KPIs in website analytics that beginners should focus on. Understanding these 10 KPIs will simplify the learning process and establish a strong foundation for comprehending website analytics.
1. Bounce Rate
If you land on a page and like its content, wouldn’t you be compelled to stay longer and explore the website?
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of users who click out of your web page after viewing it.
A high bounce rate indicates users might be clicking out early because they didn’t like the content or had issues with the page.
For example, it might have taken the page more than three seconds to load, or some of its external links are defective.
A bounce rate of 70% is considered high.
2. Sessions
A session is recorded when a user interacts with your web page.
Examples of web page interactions include clicking on a CTA button, contributing a comment on a blog, or downloading a PDF.
An individual user can have multiple sessions with a webpage. You can analyze sessions from two perspectives: Depth and Breadth.
- Session Depth: Tracks the number of pages per visit
- Session Breadth: Tracks the number of new or unique pages visited per session.
A high session rate is a sign that users are enjoying your content and actively engaging with your website.
The next two KPIs are relevant to Sessions.
3. Pageviews
Pageviews measure the total number of times a website visitor has viewed a page. When a page is uploaded to your website, a pageview is recorded. A page that’s refreshed is counted as a pageview.
Tracking pageviews helps you understand how traffic flows on your website.
- Which pages receive the highest traffic?
- Which blogs are popular with users?
- Do the landing pages resonate with users?
- Is your website easy to navigate?
The pageview KPI shows the frequency at which a web page has been viewed. However, a high pageview count doesn’t necessarily mean your content’s a home run with users.
The high pageview number may result from repeated visits to the same pages by the same users.
The next KPI provides a better insight into whether your web pages are attracting a larger audience.
4. Unique Pageviews
Unique pageviews is a KPI that measures the number of individual visitors to your web pages within a specific time frame.
The keyword is “unique.”
With unique pageviews, each visitor to a web page is counted only once. If the same user visits the same web page at another time, the user is no longer included in the number of unique pageviews.
A high unique pageviews count is a sign that your website is growing. It shows that your content is reaching a wider audience and more people are engaging with your website.
How to Analyze Pageviews and Unique Pageviews
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5. New Visitors
The New Visitors KPI measures the number of new people visiting your website. A high new visitors KPI indicates that your on-page and off-page optimization strategies are successfully driving visitors to your website.
- On-page SEO refers to the techniques and processes implemented on web pages to boost their visibility to search engines.
For example, using high-ranking keywords throughout the content, as well as in meta tags, headers, and URL structures. - Off-page SEO refers to the techniques and processes used to improve a website’s position on the SERP.
Examples of off-page SEO strategies include securing backlinks from authoritative sites, social media marketing, collaborating with influencers, guest blogging, and earning mentions on reputable websites.
6. Returning Visitors
Returning visitors is a KPI that measures users returning to your site after a previous visit.
An impressive number of returning visitors is a good sign that could suggest any of the following outcomes:
- The website consistently provides an excellent user experience.
- Content is high-quality: Unique, useful, informative, compelling, and engaging.
- Customers are happy with your products or services.
- Customer retention strategies are working.
How to Analyze the New Visitors to Returning Visitors Ratios
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7. Traffic Sources
The traffic sources KPI shows you where your website visitors are coming from.
Website traffic comes from six sources:
- Direct Traffic: Visitors who land on your website after typing your URL on their browser.
- Organic Search: Visitors who find your website from the SERP after launching a search.
- Email Marketing: Visitors who signed up for your newsletter service and clicked on the link provided by your email.
- Paid Ads: Visitors who go to your website after coming across or clicking on a paid advertisement.
- Social Media: Visitors who decide to check out your website after learning about it on a social media platform.
- Referrals: Visitors from other websites that link back to your website.
The traffic source KPI helps you understand your audience, provides valuable insights on how to improve your digital marketing strategies, and enables efficient budget management.
Allocate more funds to digital marketing strategies that consistently deliver high ROI.
8. Demographics
Demographics identify the characteristics of your audience.
Examples of website demographics include:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Income
- Education
Website demographics help you understand your audience better. You will learn who they are, what they need, and where they come from. You can create content that they will find relevant, useful, and valuable.
Customized content leads to higher engagement, improved conversion rates, and ultimately, a boost in search rankings.
Understanding website demographics will help in creating effective marketing materials and product descriptions, ultimately leading to increased sales.
9. Conversion Rate
The conversion rate KPI tracks the percentage of site users who completed an action on your website.
Here are examples of website conversions:
- Signing up for the newsletter service
- Purchasing a product
- Registering or opening an account
- Submitting a form
- Downloading a PDF
Monitoring the conversion rate KPI is essential as it shows whether your marketing content, web copy, CTAs, and design elements are achieving the desired outcomes.
A conversion rate of 2% to 3% is considered good for many websites.
10. Page Load Time
Page Load Time measures the loading speed of your web page. Ideally, web pages should load within 8.6 seconds on a mobile device and 2.5 seconds on a PC desktop.
50% of users will abandon the search if the web page doesn’t load in three seconds.
A slow-loading web page will negatively impact user experience and will result in higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates.
Step 2: Select the Right Website Analytics Tool
Website analytics tools are software programs that extract, collect, measure, and analyze data and organize it in a report form.
With so many amazing website analytics tools available online, how do you choose the right one for your business?
Here’s a five-point guideline to help you find the right website analytics tool for you:
1. Stick to the Basics
Website analytics tools are differentiated by their features. Of course, the most complex programs are more expensive… but do you really need the extra features when you’re still learning analytics?
Stick to the basics and choose a website analytics tool that can provide the ten essential metrics we discussed earlier.
2. Keep the Process Simple
The learning curve is steep at the start when you’re learning a new skill. If the setup time and onboarding process are intimidating, you won’t be encouraged to use the software and retrieve the analytics.
Select an analytics tool that offers a simple, no-frills approach to setting up and running the program on your website.
3. Scalability of the Program
Right now, the ten essential metrics are enough to get you started on website analytics. In the future, as you become more competent, you’ll look for other metrics to answer the questions you’ve uncovered.
Consider website analytics tools that offer features such as preset and custom reports, the ability to extract additional metrics, and integration with other business software.
4. What’s Your Budget?
You can find free website analytics tools that get the job done. Examples of these free website analytics tools include Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity, and Matomo.
However, the free versions have limited capabilities. As your online business grows, you’ll have to subscribe to paid versions to unlock the additional features you need.
5. Respect Users’ Privacy
Website users are aware that their online activity is being tracked. You can’t expect to embed trackers on your website and hope users are fine with it.
Otherwise, you might get fined.
In 2018, the European Union (EU) implemented the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a comprehensive policy that’s intended to protect and ensure the integrity of people residing within its territories and the European Economic Area (EEA).
The rules of the GDPR apply to businesses operating outside the EU, and the penalties are heavy.
For this reason, you might want to consider privacy-first website analytics tools that don’t plant cookies – small text files that collect information about users’ interactions on a website.
Another option is to disclose to users that you’re using cookies and provide options to reject, accept, or modify the software.
We’ve narrowed down your choices to the five website analytics tools below:
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Website Analytics Tool |
Key Features |
Price |
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Google Analytics |
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Ahrefs |
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SEMrush |
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Matomo |
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RevenueCloudFX |
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Since you are learning website analytics for the first time, select only one analytics tool and work with it until you become proficient.
When you’ve become an expert with one analytics tool, adapting to other tools will be much easier.
Step 3: Follow the 4 Best Practices For Applying Website Analytics
Here are four best practices that beginners can follow when learning about website analytics.
1. Ask For Help
Sure, you can learn website analytics on your own. However, if you can find someone who has worked with analytics before, ask for help.
The individual doesn’t have to be an expert. The qualification is that your friend has successfully used a website analytics tool, derived benefits, and recommends it.
On that note, we recommend selecting your friend’s website analytics tool to make the learning process easier.
For example, you want to understand user behavior.
Your friend will configure the analytics tool’s platform to track conversions, such as CTA clicks, newsletter signups, product purchases, and submission of contact forms.
Similarly, your friend will ensure the key web pages are properly tagged with a tracking code. What key web pages are we referring to?
- Landing pages
- Exit pages
- Content pages
- Product Categories
- E-portal: Shopping Cart and Checkout Counter
- Thank You page
If no one in your network can assist you, feel free to contact the developer’s customer support service.
2. Get Started Right Away
Some entrepreneurs use website analytics after their business gains traction. We recommend starting right away.
Use the analytics tool to audit on-site and off-site optimization:
- Is your website mobile responsive?
- Do your web pages download within three seconds?
- Is your website easy to navigate and explore?
- Did you use the right keywords for your content, tags, and descriptions?
- Are your links and buttons updated and properly functioning?
The more data you have, the lower the probability of making costly mistakes or oversights when the website goes live.
3. Integrate with Other Sources of Data
Expand the coverage of website analytics by integrating it with other sources of data, such as:
- Google Ads
- Google Data Studio
- Social media pages
- Email marketing software
- CRM software for tracking sales and leads
Casting a broad net online allows website analytics to capture more data points, enhancing analysis and streamlining probabilities.
4. Share Customized Reports
Analytics tools enable customization of reports that summarize necessary data for analyzing specific business performance areas. Customize an analytics report format that removes less relevant data and highlights key performance numbers.
Once you’ve completed the reports, share them with your business partners, directors/shareholders, key executives, and top managers to get different insights.
Schedule meetings to discuss analytics.
- Monthly: Executives and top managers; prepare a summary of the meeting and email the report to the business partners and shareholders.
- Quarterly: Business partners, shareholders, executives, managers, and employees.
By sharing analytics reports with stakeholders, you will utilize their diverse knowledge, skills, and experiences to interpret the data from various perspectives.
You will discover additional strategies to enhance results, achieve business success, and minimize the risks associated with haphazard decision-making.
Conclusion
Analytics monitors and measures website interactions, organizing data into customizable reports that support data-driven decisions to enhance business growth.
Understanding website analytics is an important skill that will help you identify business opportunities and risks.
However, the learning curve can be steep.
Approach the learning process with dedication, focus, and consistency. Your patience will be rewarded by realizing your desired outcomes.
Another option is to outsource to a digital agency so you can dedicate more time to managing the core functions of your business.
Let’s book time for a quick call and discuss how we can help your business grow with data-driven website optimization and digital marketing strategies.
