Website Analytics: Metrics, Tools, and Optimization Strategies

Posted on Mar 10, 2025 in Marketing and Market Research

Earned Data

  • Observe viral content and high-impact strategies to gather data for effective, credible, and free strategies (though uncontrollable).

Types of Analytics Tools

  • Tag-based: Track user behavior online. Example: Google Analytics.
  • Audience-based: Focus on TV users; some users install tracking software. Example: Comscore.

Relevant Variables for Decision-Making

  • Data collection (standard and customizable).
  • Flexibility of the data model (segmentation of variables).
  • Data integration (from external sources or tool extraction).
  • Data management capacity (own or external servers).

Effective Criteria for Evaluating Tools

  • Audience data: Understand your audience for a competitive advantage.
  • Content performance: Assess content effectiveness.
  • Better measurement: Understand ROI in campaigns.
  • Channel mixing: Understand the right channel combination.

Tools should have specific, demanding objectives and cannot answer every question. Choose the right tool realistically.

Potential Problems with Analytics Tools

  • Usability: Ensure the tool is easy to use and provide necessary training.
  • Functionality: Use tools relevant to real business situations.
  • Segmentation: Plan segmentation in advance or after events.
  • Technical: Consider implementation, configuration, and customization.

Key Website Metrics

Users (Unique Visitors)

The number of people visiting the website. Users are associated with an ID upon accessing a page and recognized upon return, counted as recurring users with multiple visits.

Pages Per Visit

The number of pages a person views during a single session.

Bounce Rate

The percentage of people who don’t interact with your page, often entering and immediately leaving. A higher bounce rate indicates page issues.

Exit Rate

The percentage of people who leave the website from a specific page. This isn’t necessarily negative, but high exit rates on key pages (e.g., during a purchase process) can indicate problems.

Conversion Rate

The results obtained divided by the number of visitors (or unique visitors).

Engagement

A difficult metric to measure, but it reflects the attention and interest of users. Measure participation, feelings, and experiences on the website.

  • Tips for comparing data: Avoid comparing data from one day to another; compare longer periods. Interesting comparisons provide relevant data (e.g., sessions/users).

Task Completion Rate – KPIs

The percentage of users who complete the main purpose of visiting the website. This is the best KPI to measure website performance.

  • Goals: Define realistic, specific, and measurable objectives for web analysis.
  • How to Know Company Objectives Through Metrics:
    • Support the services: Aim for immediate response to avoid channel saturation.
    • Conversion rate, bounce rate, visit duration…
    • Content: Build loyalty or gain followers on other channels.
    • Conversion rate, depth of visit, depth of content, % of new visitors…
    • Corporate: Increase loyalty and brand awareness.
    • Conversion rate, visit depth, repeat site visits, % of scan visitors, traffic acquisition…

How to Know Client Objectives Through Metrics:

      • Social media: Brand mentions versus competition mentions, content distribution, satisfaction index sentiment rate…
      • Media: Frequency of visits, average time on site, % of bounces, proportion of new to regular customers, average subscription…

KPI (Key Performance Indicator)

Basic measures.

KIA (Key Information Analysis)

Adding analysis to basic measurements.

Share of Search

How often users search for you compared to the competition.

Visitor Loyalty

The number of times a user visits a website.

Visitor Recency

How recently a user visits the website.

Fit Subscribers

The number of times people subscribe to your blog, open the newsletter…

Value Exit

The percentage of people who leave your website by clicking on something valuable to the company.

Cart and Checkout Abandonment

Users who agreed to buy a product but didn’t complete the payment process.

Days and Visits to Purchase

  • Days to purchase: The time it takes to buy.
  • Visits to purchase: The number of visits needed to buy.

Average Order Value

The average amount of money customers spend on a website. A high order value increases total revenue and improves the customer experience.

Focus on users who buy a lot to improve the conversion rate.

Opportunity and Users

Not everyone who enters a website converts. The objective is to know the number of people who can convert.

Macro Conversion

The main objective of your website. Example: Purchasing, completion rate.

Micro Conversion

Secondary objectives that contribute to the main goal. Example: Subscribed users, downloads, users who contact the company…

Economy Value

Assign a value to each objective.

The 5 Main Themes:

  • Analyze traffic sources.
  • Exit page.
  • Landing page.
  • Surfing profile.
  • Attraction and retailing.

4 Sources of Traffic

  • Search Engines: Paid or unpaid traffic from search engines. A higher percentage indicates good SEO and frequent content updates.
  • Referrals: Links on other websites that redirect traffic. A higher percentage indicates popular and relevant referrals.
  • Campaigns: Traffic from external campaigns (links). A higher percentage indicates increased advertising investment.
  • Direct Traffic: Users who type the URL directly. An increase may indicate active campaigns without links from other sites (or poor positioning).

Conduct critical analysis to allocate traffic to the right source.

Common Errors:

  • Improper URL tagging.
  • Technical problems.
  • External links (e.g., links in a PDF counted as direct traffic).

Landing Page Analysis

Identify popular landing pages to improve conversion rates. Reports show if users find correct information and like the content. Access landing pages through keywords.

Optimize:

  1. Determine if users leave, continue searching, or convert after landing.
  2. Know the bounce rate for each landing page.
  3. Eliminate unprofitable landing pages.

Know the Benefit of Each Landing Page:

  • Engagement.
  • Information.
  • Conversion.

Exit Page Analysis

Analyze exits to determine which are negative and which are acceptable. Segment users to understand potential problems. Modify pages and track improvements. Questions to help analyze exit page problems:

  • Did users make any conversions before they left?
  • Is the exit page the same as the destination page?
  • Did users download/view information before leaving?
  • How many users who exited came back?
  • How many users left during the conversion process?

Surfing Profile (User Behavior)

Understand user behavior and interests in your content. Identify most visited content and the customer lifecycle. Review website and page objectives and optimize the browsing experience.

Attracting and Retaining Users

Use loyalty strategies to attract users and convert them into loyal customers. Balance strategies based on more users/new users/less recurrent users with strategies based on more loyalty/fewer new users/more recurrent users.

Conversion Funnel

A graphic representation of the steps to achieve the final objective. Aim for high conversion rates at each level, minimizing losses. Funnel shapes:

  • A: High initial interest, rapid loss of participation, low conversion (e.g., well-positioned SEO but bad content).
  • B: High initial interest, decreasing participation, lower conversion (e.g., usability problems, unclear offers).
  • C: High initial interest, maintained commitment, low final conversion (e.g., abandonment due to product or payment issues).
  • D: Ideal funnel, where almost everyone who accesses the website makes a purchase.

Segmentation

Data without segmentation is useless. Look for segments with different behaviors. Example: Bad users vs. good users.

Choose Segments Based On:

  • Data-based intuition or experience.
  • Metrics with similar behavior.

How to Choose Them Correctly?

  • Neither too many nor too few segments.
  • Integrate them into the objectives.
  • Customize them.

Site Search

Searches can convert external traffic into conversions. Know your website’s keywords to understand user interests and products. Use metrics to study user behavior and choose words that attract users to your website.

A/B Testing

Optimize website procedures by investigating user preferences and driving conversions. Analyze user reactions and movements to determine if changes are needed.

Process:

  1. Define a measurable objective that helps achieve goals and generate benefits.
  2. Define successful hypotheses and metrics.
  3. Design the website.
  4. Define the success you want to achieve.

Results:

  • Inform the people involved.
  • Testing.
  • Write down the errors.
  • Correcting errors.

Multivariate Testing

Complex test requiring at least two alternative options to compare and choose the best one (e.g., the one with the most benefits through the conversion rate).

Site Usability

The ability of a website to be easy to use intuitively. Detect problems and improve them through data analysis.

Usability Insights:

  • A well-designed page may not be achieving expected results.
  • Observe how users interact with the website.

Ways of Knowing the Usability:

  • Lab usability studies: (8-12 people in a room to assess efficiency and satisfaction. Qualitative study with observations and comments).
  • Remote testing: (Cost-effective but lacks physical contact).
  • Surveys: (Advantages: more data, quantitative data, immediate problem detection, cheap).
  • Other user-research options:
    1. Competitive benchmarking studies: (Compare your website with competitors by a specialist).
    2. Rapid usability tests: (Evaluate if calls to action are clear).
    3. Online card-sorting studies: (Users tell you how to structure the website).
    4. Artificial intelligent visual heat maps: (Eye-tracking studies).