There are many website analysis tools available on the Internet. The most popular of these is Google Analytics. Merchants can easily install the tracking code for Google Analytics at their InstanteStore web hosting with shopping cart Website Statistics page. It’s basically a quick and easy copy-and-paste job. Once the tracking code is installed, Google Analytics will track your site and relay information about a number of different criteria.
New merchants usually get overly excited over the number of hits they get. However, this is not the most important statistic on display. In fact, it’s far from it.
To find out how to make the most of the information provided by Google Analytics, read on…
Once you’ve run through InstanteStore’s free trial shopping cart demo and experienced first-hand how easy it is to start a web store of your own, you can then take advantage of a host of useful features which include Google Analytics tracking.
You’ll notice that Google Analytics displays a lot of information. The key to utilizing Google Analytics most effectively is how to best make use of all this information.
Site Visits and Page Visits
As stated earlier, this is the stat that gets many new merchants all excited. But they will soon realize that having 2000 hits a day means nothing without any conversion. As a merchant, you should be thinking of how to convert all these visitors into customers. Obviously if you have 2000 visitors a day, then you have marketed the site well. But obviously more needs to be done to get these people to buy your product or use your services.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is often confused with exit rate. A bounce is when a visitor visits a page on a site and then leaves without visiting other pages on the site or carrying out any other actions on that page before a specific session timeout occurs. Bounce rate is calculated by dividing the Total Number of Visits Viewing One Page with the Total Number of Visits. Generally speaking a bounce rate of less than 70% is preferable.
High bounce rates are not a problem if your page contains specific information that’s all contained in one page. For example, a person searches for information about the H1N1 flu. The search results lead the visitor to your page. They find everything they need on that page and go off after getting this information. It’s normal for pages like these to have high bounce rates.
Average Time On Site
If visitors only spend a couple of seconds on your site, then this could indicate a host of issues. It could be that your site is ranked for something that is totally unrelated to what you are selling or it could be that your site pages are not “sticky” enough. The goal of every web store page is to convert a visitor into a customer. The very least a visitor should end up doing is to sign up for a newsletter/updates/free trial or take part in a poll.
Percentage Of New Visits
New web stores need to grow. Therefore, it is vital that new web store stats show a high percentage of new visits. Of course once your store becomes more established, this percentage will drop as you will have more returning customers.
Traffic Source and Referring Sites
Where your traffic comes from can determine which part of your marketing strategy is working according to plan, and what isn’t. Traffic source data is also useful in determining the effectiveness of paid campaigns or advertising. The important thing, of course, is to convert whatever traffic you get. After all, a sale is a sale.
Keywords
You’ll be surprised that some visitors may have landed on your site via keywords that you were not targeting. If these keywords are related to what you are selling or providing, then this is a good thing. Otherwise, it may just add to a higher bounce rate. Analyzing what keywords work in attracting customers to your site can also help you better plan your future marketing campaigns and tweak the current ones. For example you may find that the long tail keyword “cheap off road trainers” may not bring in as much traffic as “free arm pouch with off road trainers”. This gives you clues as to the current buying trend of your target market.
We would love to hear how analytics have helped you tweak or improve your store. Do leave us a comment.
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