Author: Marc Hyde
Published: May 25, 2022
Read Time: 4 Minutes
When looking at your website stats (whether you use Google Analytics, WP Statistics, or Fathom), you may not know what those stats are telling. More than that, you may be looking at your stats and asking, “What stats should I care about?” In this article, I’ll quickly break down what I believe are the 5 most important stats, why you should care about them, and what they mean for your business.
*note, you should also know your search appearance results and total clicks; however, we’re going to be focusing on your analytics more than your search results.
Total Visitors
Total visitors tell you how many people have landed on your website. Your analytic software views people IP addresses to track how many individual people or devices landed on your website. It doesn’t take a brain scientist to understand that you need to get people to your website in order for it to be a successful website, and this particular stat tells you just how many individuals decided to visit your website.
Page Views
The page views tells you how many individual pages were visited from your website. Your page view stats will never be lower than your total visitors, but you want the page view count to be much higher than visitors. Because if people are coming to your website and aren’t interacting with many pages or posts, it can mean that either your design isn’t great or that people aren’t getting the answers that they need. However, if you have a large amount of page views, it means that people are clicking to other pages on your website! And that’s a good thing.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate tells you how many people come to your website, view just the one page, and then instantly leave. If you’re a food blogger who receive a lot of traffic from Pinterest or Instagram, you can expect to have a higher bounce rate because people generally are looking for that specific recipe. However, if you’re a DIY blogger or a business, you want as low of a bounce rate as you possibly can, and you need to care about what your percentage is!
You may be thinking, “what’s an acceptable bounce rate?” I’ve read multiple articles and from what I gather, 50% is the split. Anything less than 50% is tremendous; anything about 50% is average. Granted, you don’t want to have a 90% bounce rate, but at the same time, it depends on your niche.
Referrers (Acquisition)
This tells you where people are coming from, and how they are landing on your website. This shows you how well you’re doing with your social media campaigns, search engine optimization (SEO), and email campaigns. Is this the most important stat? Not necessarily, but you should care about it because it shows you where your traffic is coming from, and it can give you a clue into how well your marketing is doing.
Device Type
This is a fun stat to care about because it gives you a clue as to how people are experiencing your website. In today’s modern world, people are more likely to land on your website via a mobile device. That being said, you need to have your website mobile optimized, but it also gives you a clue into who is landing on your website.
If you see many people using a desktop computer on your website, that may mean that they are a business person who is using a work computer to find answers to their questions. If more people are using a mobile device, that could mean that people often find you while they are on the go or at home.
Either way, knowing what type of device website visitors are using gives you a small clue into what type of person is interacting with your website.
My Maintenance Plan Is The Easiest Way to View Your Stats
As a part of my website maintenance plan, I include your stats and your Google search results as a part of my monthly report. That way, you never need to spend a large amount of time sifting through your stats and trying to interpret them.
To learn more about my maintenance plan, click the link below!
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Hi! I'm Marc.
I serve businesses, bloggers, and organizations by way of creating great websites that are able to be found online. Web design is a passion, but serving you is my joy.
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