Metrics matter in all aspects of business. This includes your website. To ensure your site is performing well and delivering conversions, you can deploy website traffic analysis tools to identify key trends, prioritize developing patterns, and streamline your site. So, what does the process of website traffic analysis entail? What benefits does it offer and how does it work? And most importantly, what tools are available to help? Let’s get started. Table of Contents What is website traffic analysis? How do website traffic analysis tools work? What are the benefits of website traffic analysis? Tools for Website Traffic Analysis Website traffic analysis is the process of collecting and interpreting key data points that describe web traffic to and from your site. (Web traffic is information about every user that visits your site.) While the general rule of thumb is the more traffic, the better, high traffic numbers alone don’t always translate to increased sales or lead generation.
What is website traffic analysis?
Web traffic analysis breaks down data using specific metrics to organize that data and help you understand:
- Who’s visiting your site
- How long they're on your site
- What they’re doing while on your site
- Most-likely reasons they leave your site
When you're equipped with accurate and immediate website traffic data, it’s possible to develop pattern models that identify potential weak points in your web design and inform ongoing development decisions.
The good news is there are a number of resources you can implement to help with your website traffic analysis. Next, let's look at how they work.
How do website traffic analysis tools work?
Website traffic analysis tools work by measuring key metrics — datasets that highlight where your site is seeing success and where you may need to make improvements. Here are some common website traffic metrics your tools will likely measure:
Traffic Sources
Where do your visitors come from? Are they searching (and finding) your site organically or landing on your page via social media post, paid search, or email?
While total traffic numbers offer a general picture of site success, tracing traffic sources helps identify specific successes and highlight potential problems.
For example, here's an example of what a traffic sources report looks like in HubSpot.
Page Views
Pageviews show how many times users have visited a specific page on your website. This helps pinpoint the most popular pages on your site and allows you to use them as templates for underperforming areas.
Visits
This metric showcases the total number of visits to your site, and accounts for both new and returning visitors. While this is a great metric for showing total growth over time, it’s not the best indicator of sales or lead generation — since every visit from every source is counted, regardless of what action they take (or don’t) on your site.
Unique Visits
Unique visits give you a better indication of website success, since it only counts the first (and, therefore, unique) visit of any user. Even if users return to your website every day, only their first visit counts. This helps you separate brand loyalists from prospective customers.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate describes the percentage of visitors who viewed any page on your site and immediately left without further interaction.
As noted by Business 2 Community, the average bounce rate is around 40%, but lower is always better. Website traffic analysis lets you pinpoint (and improve) current bounce rates.
Here's an example of an analysis tool within HubSpot that displays your bounce rate (among other data points):
Average Time On-Page
Average time on-page is how long visitors spend on any given page on your site.
To make use of this metric effectively, pair it with source identification: Are there user sources that pair well with increased time on page, such as a particularly successful email campaign? Are there others that don’t fare so well?
Analyzing average time on-page in combination with source traffic can help streamline your marketing spend.
Conversion Rate
This refers to the number of users that convert before leaving your website. Higher conversion rates mean more qualified leads and an increase in sales — but you also need to consider the cost per sale.
If you’re spending big money on advertising yet most users are leaving your site quickly, even positive conversion rate trends may not be enough to offset your total spend.
Exit Pages
Where are users leaving your site from? Ideally, your exit pages — meaning, visitors are leaving your site via your "thank you" page (or something similar) after they complete a purchase or form. But, your analytics show your homepage is your top exit location, you'll need to head back to the drawing board.
What are the benefits of website traffic analysis?
Website traffic analysis provides visibility into current and emerging patterns and metrics that directly impact your website's success. There are many benefits to traffic analysis, but here are three key advantages.
1. Target Market Development
Who makes up your target market? Which people spend the most money on your site and are most loyal to your brand?
Website traffic analysis helps you focus on target market segments with the highest conversion and lowest bounce rate to help maximize your marketing spend.
2. Spend-to-Sales Ratios
Whether it's website design, email, social content, or marketing campaigns, generating conversions requires you to spend money. Accurate website traffic metrics help you identify areas where your spend isn’t living up to expectations and needs.
3. Lead Generation Success
Are you getting high-quality leads from your registration forms, newsletter signups, marketing campaigns, and inbound content?
Website traffic analysis helps you connect the dots to determine if your lead generation strategy is working as intended or if it requires an adjustment.
Tools for Effective Traffic Analysis
Great website traffic analysis doesn’t just happen — thankfully, there are a host of great tools available online to help measure, monitor, and manage your website traffic.
1. HubSpot CMS
Hubspot CMS offers powerful and customizable website traffic analysis tools. Combined with top-tier campaign, lead generation, and customizable form tools, HubSpot CMS is your one-stop-shop for website metrics, management, and marketing.
Start with a CMS Hub14-day trial to discover what HubSpot can do for your site.
What we like:
- Synced with your CRM so contact data is automatically updated as users visit and engage with your site
- Offers SEO recommendations to improve the ranking of site and its content on search engines
- Use contact attribution reporting to see which content types, sources, and campaigns are driving the most leads
2. Mouseflow
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- Mouseflow lets you see exactly what your visitors see — easily replay the entire visitor experience to identify key pain points and make adjustments that lead to a boost in conversions.
Mouseflow starts at $24 per month.
What we like:
- Offers a heatmap tool that shows you what visitors are doing on your webpages and how they're engaging with your content
- Provides reporting for your contact forms so you can optimize conversions on your site
- Leverage the session recording tool to watch recorded visits to your website
3. SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is ideal for tracking your market share with benchmarks, trends, and traffic analysis. It gives you an understanding of what’s working on your site, what isn’t, and how you can improve.
SimilarWeb is free for limited tracking and traffic results.
What we like:
- Has SEO optimization tools for researching keywords and conducting competitive analyses
- Offers advanced reporting tools for tracking the performance of paid advertisements
- Use the affiliate tracking tool to forge powerful partnerships with other businesses in your industry
4. Semrush
Semrush offers website traffic analysis for both your site and websites owned by your competitors. Quickly get a sense of what marketing and traffic strategies are seeing the most success and adapt your processes in a similar way.
Try Semrush for free, then pay $99 per month.
What we like:
- A very popular tool for tracking all things related to SEO on your website
- Can filter traffic reports by region, so you can detect priority markets all over the world
- Provides detailed audience insights based on its website traffic analysis
5. Google Analytics
Arguably the king of free website traffic analysis, Google Analytics helps you build a complete picture of visitor preferences while connecting key insights to traffic results.
What we like:
- A free tool that's compatible with pretty much any website
- Compatible with other Google tools like Display & Video 360, Google Ads, Adsense, AdMob, and Ad Manager
- Offers a wide variety of insightful reports like acquisition reports, audience reports, conversion reports, real-time tracking, and more
Building Better Websites With Traffic Analysis
The more you know about your traffic analytics, the more effective and impactful your website can be. Equipped with the right website traffic analysis tools, you'll identify your top site pages, track visitor trends, calculate conversion rates, and ensure your marketing spend translates into an increase in conversions and sales.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in April 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
Topics: Web Analytics
FAQs
How do you monitor the traffic of the website example? ›
...
Google Analytics
- The average time a user spends on your page;
- The sources that direct users to your page;
- The interests of your website users.
All you have to do is enter the URL of a website and Semrush will give you information about its traffic, top organic keywords, top landing pages, backlinks, and more. It even gives you a feature called Traffic Analytics.
What should I look for in a website analytics? ›- Number of Visitors. ...
- Bounce Rate. ...
- Average Pageviews per Session. ...
- Session Duration. ...
- Average Time on Page. ...
- Top Traffic Source. ...
- Device Source. ...
- Interactions per Visit.
- On a computer, open a classic Google Sites.
- Click Settings. Manage site.
- Under "Statistics," click the Down arrow. Use Universal Analytics.
- In the text box, under "Analytics Web Property ID," enter a valid Analytics Property ID. ...
- At the top, click Save.
Ways to Track User Activity on a Website
Tools like Google Analytics and Search Console. Click tracking (recording which elements on a page users click) Scroll tracking (recording where users scroll on a page) Viewing session recordings of users as they use their site.
Will Google Analytics work on any website? Google Analytics will work on any website as long as you install the code snippet on it. Whether your website is an old and crusty one from 2010, or whether you make it yourself using one of the most popular and new website builders. All websites are made out of code.
How do I track traffic to my website for free? ›- SEMRush.
- Sitechecker Pro.
- SERanking.
- SimilarWeb.
- WebCEO.
- SerpStat.
- UberSuggest.
- Go to Google Analytics and click "Sign in to Analytics" in the upper right-hand corner of the page.
- After signing in, you'll be sent to the Home tab. Click "Real-Time", then "Overview".
- Jackpot! You've found Google Analytics Real-Time data for your website.
Use Google Analytics.
Once you sign up for Google Analytics, you'll receive a unique tracking code. Insert that code into your pages, and Google will track when your site is visited, who visited your site, and how they found your page. Don't forget to filter out your own page visits from the traffic tracker.
Google Analytics gives you the tools, free of charge, to understand the customer journey and improve marketing ROI.
What is a good bounce rate? ›
The average bounce rate is somewhere between 26% and 70%, with the optimal range being between 26% and 40%. To land anywhere under 20% is generally unlikely, so if that's what your data is showing then you may want to double-check some things.
How do you use Google Analytics? ›- Create an Analytics account. Go to google.com/analytics. To create an account, click Get started today. If you already have a Google Analytics account, click Sign in to Analytics.
- Set up Analytics on your website and/or app.
The two main categories of web analytics are off-site web analytics and on-site web analytics.
Which tool helps you measure the success of your website? ›Google Analytics tool helps us to see the exact number of traffic, sessions, views, clicks per rate, relevant search terms or keyword which directly measures the success and performance of any website.
Is Google Analytics easy to learn? ›Google Analytics is not easy to learn because it deals with large amounts of complex data that is difficult to interpret and understand. However, if you devote enough time to learning it, you can undoubtedly conquer it.
What is Google Analytics for beginners? ›Google Analytics for Beginners shows new users how to create an account, implement tracking code, and set up data filters. You'll learn how to navigate the Google Analytics interface and reports, and set up dashboards and shortcuts.
How is Google Analytics used to monitor traffic? ›Google Analytics acquires user data from each website visitor through the use of page tags. A JavaScript page tag is inserted into the code of each page. This tag runs in the web browser of each visitor, collecting data and sending it to one of Google's data collection servers.
What do you mean by traffic analysis? ›Source(s): CNSSI 4009-2015 under traffic analysis (TA) The analysis of patterns in communications for the purpose of gaining intelligence about a system or its users. Traffic analysis does not require examination of the content of the communications, which may or may not be decipherable.
What is traffic in a website? ›Definition: Website traffic refers to web users who visit a website. Web traffic is measured in visits, sometimes called "sessions," and is a common way to measure an online business effectiveness at attracting an audience.
How do I check my competitor traffic? ›For studying your own website's traffic, Google Analytics is the way to go. To find competitor web traffic, however, Traffic Analytics is the best solution as it provides you high quality data regarding competitor traffic you can use for your competitive analysis.
What are traffic analysis tools? ›
Network traffic analysis tools allow you to monitor incoming and outgoing network data packets to uncover key insights such as network performance, security, and bandwidth utilization. Various network traffic analysis tools are available for every enterprise use case and budget.
What is used to make traffic analysis? ›To make the Traffic analysis SEO Technique is used.
What does a traffic analyst do? ›Analyzes data related to traffic flow, accident rates, or proposed development to determine the most efficient methods to expedite traffic flow. Prepares drawings of proposed signal installations or other control devices, using drafting instruments or computer-automated drafting equipment.
What are 4 common traffic channels to measure? ›- Organic Search: Traffic from the Search Engines.
- Referral: Traffic from other websites.
- Direct: Traffic from Typed in traffic, bookmarks or non browser sources.
- Paid Traffic: Traffic you have paid money to get to your website.
In the Internet and Telecom Category, search engines and social network sites get up to 95% of the traffic share.
What are types of traffic? ›We're going to explore four types of website traffic today: Direct traffic. Referral traffic. Organic traffic.
How can I spy on competitors traffic? ›Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a useful tool to get insights about your competitors, and the best part is that it's free. Many people think of it as a tool to run paid advertisements, but it can help you discover what your competitors are doing to drive traffic.
- Google Analytics Benchmarking. Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) benchmark report. ...
- Similarweb. Similarweb is a free tool (with an optional Chrome extension) for comparing web traffic on sites you don't have access to. ...
- Ahrefs. ...
- Alexa. ...
- Semrush.
- SE Ranking – Best SEO competitor analysis tool for most users. ...
- Semrush – Best for SEO professionals, larger teams, and enterprise customers. ...
- BuzzSumo – Best SEO competitor research tool to assist with content marketing & influencer research. ...
- Brand24 – Best for real-time monitoring of competitors.