How to Measure Your Website Traffic and Performance

How is your website doing and are you happy with its performance? It is very tricky and tough to answer this simple question when you are not measuring your website’s performance from the beginning. However, when you launch a website, you must start implementing SEO and use key performance indicators to measure your website traffic as these are the most valuable tools. Tracking your website authorizes you to make strategic and data-based decisions. Tools that show website analytics help you to set goals, and measure your success.

However, let’s learn more about understanding how to measure your website traffic and performance and improve audience engagement.

Let us begin.

Table of Contents

How to measure your website traffic – 5 easy steps

In the next part we will talk 5 easy but effective steps that will definitely help you to measure your website traffic.

1. Your website’s goal

It’s very harsh but true – you can’t measure if you don’t know what to measure on your website. If you don’t know your website goals then you cant measure your traffic. Ask yourself – What is your website’s goal? Initially, we recommend you use the SMART model for setting website goals.

Here out the meanings Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. This discipline is to gauge website performance to keep you on track toward business goals. Without a goal, chances are that your website will fail and you won’t know when it happened. However, if you have less time, you can talk with an SEO expert to help you set up your website goals that are fit for your business needs.

2. KPIs are best friends

The concept of KPIs is nothing new and the world of business has used it for many years. KPIs are used to clarify key trends from complex, often disparate pools of data. It shows how your organization’s website is performing at any given time. They show progress in areas that are key to your website’s performance.

First, think of KPI as a vital factor for your business. A Google Analytics KPI is an indicator used to observe, analyze and optimize user behaviors on websites. Google Analytics metrics help website managers to analyze the operationalization of their marketing goals. Businesses use Key Performance Indicators for years to assess and measure their projects’ successes and failures. It is the temperature and blood pressure that will help decide whether your website is healthy or needs attention. If you calculate the right vitals, you can quickly decide whether your website is on track to meet your business goals.

3. Focus on quality

Your conversion rate is not the only important metric for measuring your website’s marketing performance. You need to also evaluate the quality of leads the website generates and are these leads a good match for your company? If a lead meets those measures it is called a Marketing Qualified Lead. Once sales validate that they are a good match, upgrade the lead to an SQL. Measuring MQLs and SQLs allows not only to measure the number of leads but also the quality of the leads. While, initially, all this information can be overwhelming. But the key is to focus on the KPIs that make difference.

4. Other things to measure

While you already have a clear goal and KPIs in mind, it would also help to check other important metrics that may have led to your goal accomplishments:

Visits – Check the total number of visits to your website at a given period, which also includes multiple visits from a single user.
Unique visitors – Check individual visitors coming to your website for a specific period. If a visitor goes to your site 5 times, the user will be measured as one unique visitor.
Pageviews –Check the number of times a specific webpage has been viewed
Page visit – Check the average number of pages viewed during a visit.
Traffic sources – Check on where traffic is coming from, either direct referral or Organic. This is a good way to track your online advertising strategies and to know the best social media channels to market your brand. This will also notify you if your SEO efforts it is making a difference to your site.
Bounce rate – Check on the percentage of site visitors who left after viewing just one page.
Landing pages – Check visitors’ point of entry to your site and the highest number of entries may be the most relevant to visitors’ search queries.

If you haven’t yet started measuring your website’s performance, these basics will help you get started. However, you can explore other metrics and make website analytics a habit, and fine-tune your site according to your learnings.

5. Tools to use

Google Analytics is the best free tool to measure your website traffic and also for measuring your website’s performance. All you need to do is to put the Google Analytics code on your website and keep tracking. It will give you almost everything you need to know in a report. There are also paid tools that effectively measure website engagement and user behavior.

Why do we need to measure website traffic

Without measuring website traffic there is no point or any reason. Then how you will rate your website if you won’t measure it. You don’t know how well or bad your website is functioning. You will not have any idea how your content is performing on your website and which type of content is working better and also which pages are not working. Metrics, traffic, and analytics may sound crazy and scary but they help you to measure your website traffic. But know that measuring your website’s performance is not rocket science. You just have to understand what you’re measuring, and why you’re measuring, and keep learning to improve your website’s performance.

How to view current website performance

Whether your website is well established or just launched yesterday still you need to check the performance. When you are getting started, monitor these metrics to establish your baseline performance and understand your audience behavior.

Check these 5 points to know your current website performance.

1. Website traffic and sources

How many visitors does your website attract each month and from where are they coming? If you have recently launched your website, establish a baseline for monthly traffic and comprehend how people find you online. Look how they land on your website like from social media posts, emails, press coverage, or other events. Studying your traffic will help you to understand what drives people to your website.

2. Audience engagement metrics

These types of metrics can help you understand how your audience navigates through your website.

Time on Page

This is the average amount of time users spend on a single page before going to the site. For example, when your average time on a page is higher for a specific blog post or page, it indicates that the content on that landing page is more interesting.

Exit Rate

This is the percentage of views on a given page. However, the exit rate measures how often the page is viewed before they navigate away from your website. Keep in mind that it makes sense for some pages to have higher exit rates, which is why it’s important to consider the context for this metric.

Bounce Rate

This is the percentage of visitors who entered your site, then exited your site from that same page. In other words, bounce rate is measured when a landing page is the first and last interaction for a user. If a landing page has a high bounce rate, it may not be enabling visitors to engage with other areas of your website.

3. Search keywords

Your website’s traffic and performance are instantly influenced by how it ranks in search engine results. This is why it’s essential to understand your audience’s search purpose. For example, when people find your website through search engines might be interested in buying a specific product from your offer. When you understand why your audience is discovering you, you can start to enhance your search engine optimization to make your website more efficiently discoverable.

Focus on the keyword that is aligned with the search intent of your audience. Use these search keywords to notify your SEO strategy, and include top-performing keywords throughout your website so that will help people find you online.

4. Site search

If you have allowed search on your website, you can also see what visitors are looking for. This is a wonderful way to learn what your audience is interested in and can connect them directly with the content. Site search can also help you know which products people are searching for on your website. This can inform everything from how you advertise products on your homepage, to whether you want to create and sell a new product that aligns with what people are already looking for from your brand.

The key takeaway

This is how you and your team should measure your website traffic and these steps will give you the correct idea of how your website is performing.

However, are you ready to launch your website for your new online course for your audiences? Then why not get started with Graphy, which is one of the popular online course-building platforms. We have multiple in-built tools on our platform that will make your work much easier.

How to measure your website traffic and performance