Basic website metrics that everyone should know!

I think that everyone that runs a website should know about web analytics and if you are reading this for the first time then perhaps this article will help shed some light on basic web analytics metrics like bounce rate, pages per visit and what visits, bounce rates and pages per visit are exactly.

If you are just beginning to understand what web analytics can do for your business then there’s a good chance that you are looking to understand what you are seeing when you open up your web analytics platform and are starting to analyze the data in order to apply it to your business.

There are a few things that are “universal” in web analytics and website traffic in general.  As long as there are websites there will be visitors, visits and unique visits and because there are people visiting websites they will always spend time on a website, look at pages in a website and leave a website.  These web metrics are universal and even though, how a web analytics platform chooses to view this elements the concepts remain similar but not the same.  So what web analytics come standard in web analytics platforms?  Well, just have a look at the following web metrics…

• Visits – This referrers to the number of times that some visits for website in a given timeframe.  From here the number of visits can tell you where the website traffic came from for certain posts, pages and content on your website.
• Pageviews – This website metric will tell you the number times that a web page is viewed.  This metric can pose some issues because users refreshing web pages over and over again and also robots that “crawl” your website have been known to inflate these numbers as well.
• Pages per visit – This metric shows you the number of web pages that are viewed during a visit on average over a given time period on your website.
• Bounce Rate – This is the rate at which people come to your website and leave after looking at only one page.  A sudden spike in a bounce rate can allow you to test your website’s usability to lower this number and keep your visitors coming back for more.
• Average Time on Site – This average tells you the average amount of time people spend surfing your website.  This tells you how long on average they will spend reading articles on your website.

I use these metrics on a daily basis when I analyze website traffic for SpicyWebDesigners.com.  The data from bounce rates to the number of visits that I am receiving help me to make decisions about how to change the usability, navigation and gain insights into why a particular article on my website was successful.  Naturally once you’ve mastered the core web analytics terminology you can start learning more advanced topics and applying them to your website analysis.

Pretty much any web analytics platform that you pick up today is going to have these metrics available.  The essence of web analytics is related to visitors and the pages that they visit on your website.  Without those two things you cannot begin to track meaningful website metrics to base your decision making on and because the study of web analytics is growing, advancing and changing rapidly it’s great to know that some things stay the same.

Luc Arnold

Teaching the basics of web analytics