How to Measure Website Performance with Google Analytics

Do you measure the performance of your website with Google Analytics on a regular basis? Analyzing the way your visitors browse and buy on your website should be a central part of your online marketing strategy. It takes the guessing game out of online marketing and helps you make decisions based on data.

Here are some tips on what to look for in your Google Analytics tool:

1. Website visits

Look at the number of unique visits to your website. Is your site traffic increasing or decreasing? Do you see a trend in year-over-year visits? If your business sells pool supplies, you’ll probably notice a spike in traffic over the spring and summer months. If your business offers tax preparation, you’ll see a spike around tax season.

2. Engagement

How long do visitors stay on your website? Check the bounce rate, the average number of pages per visit, and the average time spent on site. This will help you find out if your visitors are finding the information they need and if they are interested in learning more about your products or services.

3. Traffic sources

Knowing where your traffic comes from is a huge asset when it comes to planning out your traditional and online marketing strategies. This is where you can see if people are coming to your site via links posted on social media sites, organic search results, directly typing in the URL, or through a referral from another website. You can see whether your efforts in social media marketing are paying off, or if you need to ramp up your efforts on organic search engine marketing.

4. Keywords

What words or phrases do people use to find your website in the search engines? You may be surprised to find out how some people arrived at your site. Focus your search engine optimization efforts around ranking for the keywords and phrases that are most relevant to your specific product, service, or local area. Avoid keywords that result in a high bounce rate.

5. Landing pages

Since visitors don’t always land on your homepage, it’s important to see how well your landing pages communicate the information visitors are searching for. Which landing pages receive the highest number of visits? Make sure those pages are well optimized and that they include easy-to-understand “next steps” for visitors to contact your business, sign up for your newsletter, or make a purchase.

You should also keep an eye out for “dead end” landing pages, where customers leave your site rather than move forward in the buying or information-gathering process. Make sure these landing pages guide the visitor to the next step without asking for too much commitment too soon.

Online Marketing Minneapolis

You don’t know what you can’t measure. Lucky for us, with online marketing, you can measure just about anything. To get help with your online marketing strategy and measuring your website analytics, give us a call at (763) 548-2297 or contact us by email.

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http://twitter.com/galitzamler Galit Zamler

Google Analytics may not say how long it takes your site to load in the browser of the user, but the page loading speed has an impact on almost all the parameters that Google Analytics measures.

Esther

Great point, Galit! Thanks for sharing.

Seyemore

This post would be more helpful if it showed some average numbers to benchmark by. How do I know if I’m getting better? I know a 75% bounce rate is better than a 90% bounce rate, but what rate/percentage should I be aiming for?

Esther

Great question, Seyemore. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to that question. Google estimates that the average website bounce rate is around 40%, but numbers can vary widely depending on your industry, type of site/page, brand credibility, user intent, etc. For example, a blog generally has higher bounce rates (70% and above is considered average), while lead generation sites should have a lower bounce rate (30-50%).

See this article if you’d like to dig a little deeper on bounce rate: http://www.blastam.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/what-is-bounce-rate/

As for the other metrics mentioned under “Engagement,” it’s a good sign if your pages per visit and time on site are fairly equivalent (i.e. 2 pages per visit should equal about 2 minutes on site).

If anyone has other insights that would be helpful, please jump in! Analytics is a continual learning process, so we’d love to hear what you’ve read and learned over the past few months.