Tracking Your Traffic

Facts – Day to Day

Most businesses have to find an agency or select an internal key member with the task of producing relevant, informative content for your readers that convert into either buyers, or part of your community. Furthermore, a business needs to make sure they are well versed about staying on top of their SEO strategy. Maybe you are a marketing director with a flair for writing or a love of sharing words of wisdom with your audience. If you are already focused on delivering engaging, fun and interesting content for your readers, half of your battle has been won. The other half of your battle is to continually track your traffic and to stay aware of the composition of your audience. Real-time tracking of your visitors can ensure that you provide the relevant news story or article that your readers crave.

Know the Number of Visitors Your Website Receives

As you proceed to master the art of content creation, it’s important to measure certain criteria. For example, understanding the numbers of visitors your website currently receives, in order to build on that traffic. Many of you are familiar with Google Analytics. When used correctly, it will deliver the number of visitors that your website receives at different times of the day, where they are coming from, how long they were there and more data than you can shale a stick at. Most companies turn it on and watch the data pile up without ever understanding how to use that data or what it even means.

The beauty of GA is it will open new insights from remarketing to your users based on their site actions to using the tag manager which allows the site owner to update or add website tags and mobile applications, easily for free, whenever they want. Needless to say, I’m a big fan of Google Analytics, but like many of their products, you never know when they are going to pull the rug underneath you. So many times I’ve gotten really friendly and cozy with a tool or application, only to read of it’s demise and slow death.

Therefore, I decided to do a little research in order to find a nice substitute that will help our forensic analyst gather more information and data. What I’ve discovered is there are so many tools out there but for the sake of this article I would like to introduce you to a few notable analytic tools you may not be aware are out there.

Here Are Some Tools For Tracking Your traffic: Take These Out For a Spin

VisiStat is a program that provides real-time tracking of visitors. The beauty about this tool is they have several great lead generation programs built into their dashboard application. A variety of lead generation tools at your fingertips, what’s not to love? From a lead capture tool that identifies anonymous website visitors to a campaign tracking tool, and a hosted form you can build with the ease of a drag and drop feature.  I would recommend taking them out for a spin.

Another program I was recently introduce to is Woopra. This robust analytic program will allow you to track page views, events, including finding your top conversion funnels. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could find out more about your customers? This program will show you where they found you, who they are and how you can engage them with a stronger strategy.

Clicktale is yet another tool not too many of you may be familiar with. One of their features is a session playback. It will actually playback the session for individual customers and what they did or didn’t do. One of my favorite features is their eye candy. They have several heat maps for a variety of measurements. From understanding how your visitors are experiencing your site on Mobile to any desktop. They have several plans that may fit your budget.

CrazyEgg is another tool worth taking out for a spin. This tool generates and builds heat maps in order to track your visitors every click. The beauty with this tool is a great way to explore your website usability with a step by step tracking of where the user has clicked. It allows you to see what areas of your site the users are finding interesting and clicking on the most.  It can help you improve your website design and ultimately your lack of conversions.

Track The Location Of Your Visitors Is A Must In Today’s Competitive Landscape

Knowing the location of your visitors is also vital. Capitalize on your current success. If you notice a trend in which your visitors are located in one particular country or city, you may wish to include content that would be relevant to them.  Remember localization is gold when it comes to your local traffic. Perhaps you draw in a lot of San Franciscans to your daily restaurant blog. A way to continue to capitalize on this success could be to feature coupon campaigns for San Francisco residents or you may want to post articles about what’s happening around the San Francisco, Bay Area. W3Counter is another tool that you can use to figure out the location of your visitors.

Which Words Are Used to Find Your Website?

Understanding your company brand and message is ultimately your best tool. You need to understand which words are associated with your websites. I could get into addressing your SEO keywords but at this point of the game you should understand the need to infuse your targeted keywords in a natural and logical way for your message. I don’t need to add that keyword stuffing is an automatic ground for a penalty from Google therefore; you need to be conscientious and avoid the mistake of inadvertently using a keyword often. Nothing wrong with using secondary, tertiary and long tail keywords.

Pages Visited and the Duration of Stay

A lot of these analytics tools can help you develop and understand which web pages are consistently visited by your readers. If you notice a certain web page is suffering in its readership, this may provoke an A/B Testing for that page. But, before you start down that path, make sure that page is working properly. It could be down due to a broken or blocked hyperlink. I can’t tell you how many times, it’s a simple redirect on your part, or it could be due to a lack of a strong CTA (Call To Action). Readers may be unlikely to return to the webpage if it contains a lengthy hyperlink. These are common issues you may want to consider when looking to boost the traffic for particular pages of your website. Analytics tools can also provide insight on the duration of a visitor’s stay on one of your web pages. If a visitor tends to leave after just a few seconds on one of your pages, you may infer that content is outdated or needs to provide greater value to readers. Basically keep this in mind, “I came, I saw, I puked, I left. “ There aren’t truer words to what a page bounce really means.

The Power of a Consistent Stream of Visitors

The purpose of consistently using tracking tools is to help you build a stronger message that will convey you understand your readers and customers needs. Ultimately the goal of any company is to develop a consistent stream of visitors who are constantly checking into your websites. From offering a subscription service, to an opportunity for a return visitor to become a buyer. Ultimately, consistent readers can translate into consistent growth and profitability for your business.

Knowledge Is Power: Catering Your Content 

Yes, knowledge is power, and I’ve heard that power is everything. Therefore, keep in mind your data factors in and can impact your content creation. You can ensure the content you provide will be relevant with your community.

If the majority of your readers are college students as opposed to retirees, you will likely need to provide drastically different content for life advice, budgeting, travel tips or even recipes. Using analytical tools will provide you with the knowledge that you need to customize your content to expand your audience, provide a favorable first impression and ultimately leave them with a positive feeling after having visited your website.

At level343 we love data. We eat, drink and breath data. Are you struggling with your traffic or how you can gain more traffic with a strong analytic tool? Give us a call, or let us know how we can help you in the comments below.