If you’re running a website, you want to make sure it’s achieving its goals and reaching its audience effectively. But how do you know if you’re on the right track? Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of digital marketing metrics! In this fast-paced, ever-evolving field, it can be hard to keep track of all the numbers, graphs, and charts that flood your inbox and analytics dashboard. 

We’re here to help you navigate the maze of website traffic metrics and measure your online performance with confidence. These metrics give you valuable insights into the behaviour of your visitors, including how they find your website, what they do when they get there, and how long they stay. By keeping track of these metrics, you can identify areas of your website that need improvement and make data-driven decisions to optimise your website’s performance.

Why should you care about digital marketing metrics? For starters, they’re the key to unlocking the secrets of your online performance. Whether you’re running a small business, launching a startup, or working for a Fortune 500 company, tracking your metrics can help you answer critical questions such as:

• How many people are visiting my website, and where are they coming from?
• Are my social media campaigns driving engagement and brand awareness?
• How effective is my email marketing at converting leads into customers?
• What’s the ROI of my digital advertising, and how can I optimise it?

What good is a website if nobody’s visiting it? In this blog post, we’ll explore 11 website traffic metrics that you should be tracking to measure your success. We’ll explain what each metric means, how it’s measured, and provide examples of how to use it to improve your website’s performance. 

Table of contents

1. Total website visits
2. Traffic by channel
3. Unique visitors
4. New visitors vs. returning visitors
5. Bounce rate
6. Interactions per visit
7. Pages per session
8. Time on site
9. Mobile traffic
10. Exit rate
11. Inbound links to the website

1. Total website visits

This is pretty self-explanatory: it’s the total number of visits to your website over a given period of time. This can give you an overall sense of your website’s popularity and reach. You can find the figure in your website analytics tool, such as Google Analytics. For example, if your website gets 10,000 hits in a month, that would mean 10,000 different individuals clicked through to your website in that month.

2. Traffic by channel

This measures where your website traffic is coming from, whether it’s from organic search, paid search, social media, referral sites, or direct traffic. For example, you may find that 60% of your traffic comes from organic search, 20% from social media, and 20% from paid search. Understanding your traffic sources can help you optimise your marketing channels and refine your targeting efforts. 

3. Unique visitors

Unlike total website visits, unique visitors is the number of individual people who visit your website within a given timeframe. This is useful for understanding how many people are interested in your website. For instance, if the same person visits your website three times in a month, they’ll only be counted as one unique visitor. Again, you can find this metric in your website analytics tool.

4. New visitors vs. returning visitors

This is the ratio of new visitors to returning visitors to your website. New visitors are individuals who have never visited your site before, while returning visitors are individuals who have visited your site before and are coming back for more. For example, if you had 1,000 new visitors and 2,000 returning visitors in a given month, that would mean your new vs. returning visitor ratio is 1:2. Understanding this ratio can help you tailor your marketing efforts to different audiences and better understand where to focus your marketing efforts. 

5. Bounce rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your website after only viewing one page. For example, if 30% of your website visitors leave after viewing only one page, your bounce rate is 30%. A high bounce rate can indicate that your website isn’t engaging enough or that people are having trouble finding what they’re looking for. 

6. Interactions per visit

This is the number of interactions visitors have with your website per visit, such as clicking on links, page views, watching videos, downloading content, or form submissions. This can give you a sense of how engaged your visitors are with your site and its content. For example, if you had 1,000 interactions and 10,000 total website visits in a given month, that would mean your interactions per visit ratio is 1:10. 

By tracking interactions per visit over time, you can identify trends and make changes to improve the user experience on your website. For example, you could try changing the layout or design of your website, improving navigation, or adding more interactive elements to encourage visitors to engage more.

7. Pages per session

Similar to interactions per visit, pages per session measures the average number of pages people view during a single visit. It indicates the level of engagement and interest of your website visitors. A higher pages per session metric can indicate that visitors are exploring your website in-depth and finding valuable content. On the other hand, a low number of pages per session may suggest that your website needs improvement in terms of content, layout, or navigation. 

Visitors may be leaving your website after viewing only one page because they’re not finding what they’re looking for or they’re not interested enough to explore further. By tracking pages per session over time, you can identify trends and make changes to improve the user experience on your website. Ultimately, by increasing the number of pages per session, you can increase the chances of visitors taking action on your website, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or contacting you for more information.

8. Time on site

This measures the average amount of time visitors spend on your website before leaving (it could be two minutes, it could be 20). A higher time on site generally indicates that people are finding your website interesting and engaging.

9. Mobile traffic

This measures the percentage of website traffic coming from mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets. For example, if 50% of your website traffic comes from mobile devices, that means half of your visitors are accessing your site from their phones or tablets. As mobile usage continues to rise, it’s crucial to optimise your website for mobile devices to ensure a positive user experience. 

10. Exit rate

Similar to bounce rate, exit rate measures the percentage of visitors who leave your website from a specific page. For example, if 40% of visitors exit your website from your pricing page, your exit rate for that page is 40%. This can help you identify which pages may be causing visitors to leave your website. 

11. Inbound links to the website

This metric measures the number of external links pointing to your website from other sites. Inbound links can help to boost your website’s SEO, as search engines view external links as an indication of your site’s credibility and authority. To measure inbound links, you can use SEO tools like Ahrefs or Moz. For example, if you have 500 inbound links from other websites, that would mean 500 other sites have linked back to your website.

Tracking your website’s online performance

And there you have it! These are some of the most important website traffic metrics to track for measuring the success of your website and ensuring that it’s meeting your goals. By regularly monitoring these metrics, you can gain valuable insights into the behaviour of your visitors and make data-driven decisions to optimise the user experience, increase conversions, and ultimately improve your website’s performance.

Remember, tracking website traffic metrics is an ongoing process that requires regular monitoring and analysis. And website traffic is important, but it’s only half the battle. Once you’ve lured visitors to your website, you need to keep them engaged and interested. If you’re not sure where to start, we can help.