How to Look at Traffic Sources for your Web Site

Earlier this week, I wrote a post about basic web analytics, and stats you should be pulling on a regular basis to better understand how your site is used.

Traffic. From Flickr user Zoonabar.

The most important stats to track for my clients are those regarding web site traffic sources. Where is site traffic coming from, and what does it do once it gets there?


There are several kinds of traffic you'll see on your stats, including the following:

• Organic (unpaid, regular) search
• Paid search
• Online ads
• Social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, other)
• Email
• Direct (people type your URL into their browser or they have it bookmarked)
• Referring Sites (any other web site that refers traffic to you)

First, it's critical that you understand what portion of your site traffic is coming from each source type.

• It's essential to know whether most of your traffic comes from outreach like social or email, or customers reaching out to you through channels like search.
• It's also good to know what sites are referring traffic to you. Finding out which blogs, etc. are linking to you and developing those relationships could bring you a lot more traffic down the road. 

It's just as important to understand a few things about the behavior of traffic from each source. 

• Does one of your sources have a particularly high bounce rate (rate of one-page visits), for example? Say you find that the bounce rate from your ad traffic is far higher than for other channels. You might want to develop a special landing page for people who click on ads that better introduces your site and what you have to offer.
• Is one of your sources responsible for most of the conversion behavior on your site? If it turns out that people who reach you from email or social media convert far better than other kinds of traffic, then your goal should be to get new visitors to sign up for email and join you on Facebook or Twitter before doing anything else.

How are you using web analytics to grow site traffic and conversions? Let me know or drop me a line if you want to talk about it. 

What You Need to Know About Basic Web Analytics

Web analytics sounds like rocket science, but it's not. You really should be looking at your web traffic on a regular basis  - it will help you better understand what's truly driving your business.

Image: Search Engine People Blog.

Which numbers are worth a look?

I always tell people to start with the basics:

• Visits - how many different visits there have been to your site in a given period. A visit is a session on your web site, which might include multiple page views.
• Visitors - a visitor is a person visiting your site. You'll want to check for new and repeat visitors, so that you can understand loyalty, and also understand how many visits it takes to convert a customer.
• Average time on site - This is how long the average visit lasts. It's good to keep an eye on this - short visits could mean that people aren't engaging with your site the way you want them to.
• Bounce Rate - this is the rate of site visits that only include one page. Bounce rates for blogs are typically high as people read that day's post and leave, but a high bounce rate on an e-commerce site means that people are leaving your site without buying. If this is the case, you need to figure out why. Are you, for example, rickrolling people who come to your site from ads or email?
• Pageviews - this is the total number of pages viewed on your site during a given timeframe. Ultimately, this isn't a very useful number - numbers like Visits and Visitors are more instructive as to your traffic. However, this is always the highest number in your stats, and I find it's the one that the people in the corner offices always want to hear about.
• Traffic Sources - this is the most important data you have. This tells you how people are finding your site - through your email campaigns? Via Facebook? Through search? online ads? Further to this, once you connect traffic sources with conversions, you'll find out what's really working for you. For example, if you find that email isn't your biggest source of traffic, but it is the one responsible for the most conversions, then you know you need to concentrate your marketing efforts on building your email list - your customers may need to hear from you on email a few times before they are ready to buy.

How are you using analytics to drive your business? Let me know in the comments or contact me and I'll show you what to do.