A Simple Approach to Getting the Most from your Website Statistics

Let’s talk about data science

Data science is nothing new. It’s just a fancy name for something we’ve all been doing since we first began looking at our website traffic statistics.

But, like any other science, data science can be complex.

It’s not just about reviewing traffic numbers. It’s looking at the full analytics and understanding which of those numbers are important, and then adapting and making changes and retesting until you see positive results.

Ultimately, what you want is to ensure that your statistics are aligning with what YOU want to get out of the website.

What are your goals? Are you seeking brand awareness? Or sign-up to your mailing list? Or conversion of leads to sales?

Having a thorough understanding of how your customers are engaging with your website, emails and campaigns allows you to get better at pre-empting what your customers want and what they don’t want. And ensuring you are meeting your business or marketing goals.

To make the best use of your data to start analysing your stats, consider these important issues:

1. We recommend Google Analytics
   It continues to be the most widely spread, useful – and importantly, free – analytics tool.
2. Don’t look just at the traffic numbers, check out what’s happening over time
   Are your stats on an upward or downward trajectory overall? That’s what is important.
3. Where are your customers coming from?
   By looking at the referrer section of your analytics you can see where people are coming from. If one particular referrer is particularly strong you can start to look at how you market to that sector.
4. Look at your bounce rate
   This is particularly important if you are paying for leads (for example, via Google Adwords) because you’re paying for every visit, you want to ensure users aren’t leaving the site before they have taken the action you want them to take. An effective way to reduce your bounce rate is to ensure your offset advertising matches what your users see when they get to your site. That means making use of specific landing pages or targeted popovers – so that the call to action on the page matches the call to action or offering on the ad.
5. Look at how frequently you review your google analytics
   We recommend you look at them at least weekly. If you have a targeted ad campaign running, you should be looking at your stats – and reviewing and optimising your messages – daily.
6. Make sure your site looks good across different devices
   You can drill down and compare the bounce rate and time spent on your site across different devices. This will help you to ensure that mobile users are having a great experience on your site.

The most important thing about your web stats is to not be intimidated by them. They are there to serve you, so get in and have a look around. Familiarise yourself and check on them regularly. Once you learn to harness the power of your own information, you will find endless ways to use that data to create targeted, more successful campaigns.