Website Analytics - Get Amazing Insights About Your Business Website!	Visited: 378 Not rated Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Kabir Bedi February 11, 2010

Even though website owners may use Website Analytics programs, not many would use it beyond having a look at the number of visitors on the website. Majority are just satisfied seeing a couple of new visitors now and then and they don't really mind the occasional drops in the number.

And if this is the case with you, you are seriously underestimating and under-utilizing the power of website analytics!

Website Analytics, the name itself suggests an analysis of the website. However, there is more. It is a powerful marketing tool, not to mention the ease with which you can spot the negative points of the website as well as locate the strong ones. Website analytics, is used effectively can help you gain amazing insights about your website, your audiences and your business as a whole.

Here are some things you need to keep a watch on:

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the number of people who, after arriving on your site, leave immediately without even pausing to look at another page. This statistic is represented as a percentage of your visitors.

A high bounce rate should be enough to set off the warning bells ringing! It cannot always be the case when visitors land on your website by accident and leave abruptly when they find out it was not what they were looking for. It indicates that there is a serious problem with your website. Either you are not providing users with relevant content or your design overwhelms them or your call-to-actions are just plain ineffective. You should also consider checking your ad campaigns, for if they are targeted badly, you might be attracting a whole lot of irrelevant traffic.

Low bounce rate pages would contain the kind of content people want to read more of and this would give you more insight about about the preferences of your visitors.

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate is the percentage measure of the amount of people visiting your website that go to your goal pages and also carry out the desired action that you want them to... whether it is buying a product, registering for an account, signing up for something or contacting you for business.

First of all, you need to have a clear path on your website that will lead visitors to your goal. It many be a certain navigation pathway, a efficient checkout process or anything like that. Next, you need to review your website analytics to figure out where exactly users are falling off. This will help you identify the potential obstacles of goal completion. Often times, its overtly complex forms that encourage users to leave or lengthy checkout process that makes them abandon their shopping carts! Once you figure out why people aren't completing goals, you can think of ways to fix the issues.

Percentage of Visitors who View Target Pages

Target pages are quite different from conversion points, even though they may seem to be the same at the first glance. Say, if you are a service provider... Your target pages would be your Services page, where you provide information about your business and services while your conversion point would be the Contact Us page.

Target pages are the primary step towards goal completion and evaluating the difference of user fallout between the conversion points and target pages can give you valuable insights about what needs to be done on your website.