Did you know we have around 5,708,965 websites in India as of February 2023? So, if you struggle to generate traffic on your website, you are competing with those billions of websites. Don’t be discouraged by the numbers; our population and digital media users are also increasing. Believe us! You have enough space to generate traffic. And it is humanly possible to generate traffic and improve the performance of your website with specific proven strategies.

You may think there is no need to track the website; you have to generate good content, and traffic will come automatically. Are you one among them? If so, it is time to change the mindset. Let us first see why you need to measure the performance of your website.

Why do you need to measure the performance and Traffic of your website?

Measuring your website traffic and performance is crucial to optimizing your online presence and achieving your business goals. Here are some key reasons why you should constantly monitor your website performance:

• Tracking the website performance can help you with the overall performance of your website and page views, bounce rates, and average time people spend on your website. This evaluation will help you understand the engagement of your website visitors.
• Website analytics provide demographics, geographic location, devices used, and other information about your audience. You can use this data to tailor your marketing and content strategies to target your audience better.
• Analyzing which pages are more popular and which have high bounce rates will help you optimize your content strategy.
• Tracking website traffic for e-commerce sites or websites with goals like lead generation or form submission helps monitor conversion rates.
• Website analytics provide data on keyword performance and other SEO metrics to refine your SEO strategy.
• If you are running online marketing campaigns, measuring website traffic helps you assess its effectiveness. You can track whether your traffic sources are organic, paid, or social. You can reframe your strategy to increase the return on investment.
• User behavior analytics will help you improve your website’s user experience.

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We hope you are convinced about the benefits of measuring your website traffic. Next, we will walk you through ways to measure your website traffic and performance.

Ways to Measure Your Website Performance

Identify the Goals of Your Website

You want to measure your website performance. Let us suppose you have a traffic-generating website. What is your end goal? What actions do you expect from visitors to your website? 

So, firstly, you need to identify the goal of your website.  The end goal of most business websites is to generate revenue. But there may be other milestones that you want your buyer persona to take before buying your products or services, Such as contact form submissions, content downloads, email subscriptions, and live chat interactions.

How do you identify your Website’s goals?

• Determine the primary purpose of your website.
• Identify your target audience and their needs.
• Define Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) objectives.
• Identify your competitor and analyze their strength and weaknesses.
•  Learn from the successful websites in your industry.

Identify Your Key Performance Indicators

You need to identify the key performance indicators(KPIs) that will serve as a yardstick to measure the success of your website. KPIs include conversion rates, bounce rates, page views, and social media engagement. This step will be more straightforward as you have identified your website goals. Make sure that each KPI aligns with your key business goals.

If the goal is to increase sales, corresponding KPIs should include conversion rates, average orders, revenue, etc.

You can do some basic research to understand the performance indicators used in your field. Don’t forget to discuss with all the departments and stakeholders in your business to identify the indicators they consider essential. But that does not mean you should track too many KPIs. This can lead to information overload. So, focus only on the metrics directly impacting your objectives and goals. 

It is important to add quantifiable metrics and to avoid subjective or vague metrics that are difficult to measure and interpret.

Use Tools

Various tools are available to measure your website traffic, engagement, and performance.

Google Analytics is a prominent and widely used tool to measure website traffic. Follow the below steps to measure your website performance with Google Analytics.

How do you measure website traffic, performance, and other metrics using Google Analytics?

1. Set up Google Analytics

• If you do not have a Google Analytics account, set one up.
• Set up a property for your Website and obtain a tracking code.
• Install the tracking code on all pages of your website.

2. Navigate to Google Analytics Dashboard

• Login to your Google Analytics account and select the relevant website from the main dashboard.

3. Overview

• Check the “overview” section for the high-level summary of metrics.
• See metrics like users, sessions, bounce rate, and average session duration.

4. Audience Overview

• Go to “Audience” > “Overview” for insights into your website visitors.
• Explore metrics such as new and returning visitors, geolocation, and device categories.

5. Acquisition Overview

• Navigate to “Acquisition” > “Overview” to understand how users land on your website.
• Explore channels like organic search, direct, referral, and social.

6. Behavior Overview

• Check “Behaviour” > “Overview” to understand how users interact with your content.
• Analyze metrics like pageviews, average time on page, and bounce rate.

7. Conversion Tracking

• Set up goals or e-commerce tracking under “Conversions.”
• Track necessary actions like form submissions, purchases, or other conversions.

8. Site Content

• Explore “Behaviour”> “Site Content” to understand which pages are popular.

9. Site Speed

• Under “Behaviour,” check “ Site speed” to analyze how quickly pages load.

10. Event Tracking

• Use “Behaviour” > “Events” to track user interactions like clicks on specific elements.
• Set up event tracking for key actions on your site.

     11.  Mobile Performance

• Under “Audience,” check “Mobile” to see how your website performs on different devices.

    12.  Custom Reports

• Create custom reports to focus on specific metrics that matter to your business.
• Use the “Customization” tab to set up reports tailored to your needs.             

Other Website Performance Tracking Tools

Other paid tools besides Google Analytics also measure your website performance and traffic are available. They are: 

• Hubspot
• Adobe Analytics
• Hotjar
• Crazy Egg
• Matomo
• Mixpanel
• Heap Analytics
• SEMrush
• KISSmetrics
• Woopra

FAQs About Website Traffic

Why is website traffic a good Key Performance Indicator?

Identifying website traffic allows you to analyze user behavior and improve search engine rankings. This will eventually lead to increased conversions.

How to measure traffic on a website?

Website traffic can be analyzed using various web analytics tools. These tools will provide insights into user behavior and interactions. Google Analytics is the most widely used tool. There are other paid tools like Hubspot, SEMrush, etc.

What is the KPI for a website?

Key performance indicators are measurable and quantifiable metrics used to measure the progress toward your website's key objectives or goals. It will provide insight into the performance of your business. Some examples of KPIs are the number of customers retained, conversion,  revenue per client, etc.

Why is Website performance important?

Users expect a website to load quickly. A slow website can lead to poor user experience and increased bounce rate. It is also important to ensure it works well on various devices. Better website performance leads to higher search engine rankings, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction.