your visitors should be ilke this to your siteThis post is all about metrics. I am a huge fan of Google Analytics; partly because it is free, and partly because I’ve had some success in the past with using the data to improve subscriber rates. A question that comes up quite frequently in our forums is how do I increase traffic to my site?

Looking at Your Hits Won’t Get you More Hits

My title might be just slightly misleading as I’m not suggesting you ignore trying to improve traffic. I’m suggesting that too many webmasters focus on the unique visitors and hits to their site instead of core metrics that will ultimately improve those numbers.

Looking at your visitors counts isn’t going to get you more visitors.

What Will?

There are four key metrics I advise everyone add to their dashboard in Google Analytics. Keep these above all others, and make changes on your site that impact these metrics. I guarantee you will be more successful.

Here’s a quick summary of each.

1. Depth of Visit


Just as the heading says, this is a measure of how far into your content your audience is diving as a measure of pages. For the most part, half of the visitors here leave after one page, but surprisingly when I view the details of this report, more than 5% of visitors see more than 20 pages in one session. That is an indicator that there are loyal lovers of the site. Keeping a close eye on the health of this number will be a great indicator of how the loyal members are behaving, and if we’re picking up new addicts.

2. Average Pageviews for All Visitors


Another important figure to consider is the number of pages visitors are looking at in each session. What’s a good number for this stat? It really depends on the nature of your site. A site designed to sell a product should have a fairly low pageview count since you’ll want to close them on the landing page :), but a blog, forum, or article site should be looking to blast this number through the roof! This metric is the key behind the next two, which all play a role in defining your site stickiness.

3. Time on Site for All Visitors

If you do your best at 1. and 2., this metric should also be increasing. If you site is a blog, try and link to other articles of interest on your site that you think the reader might also find interesting. Scroll back up to the first paragraph and you’ll see I’ve done just that by linking to another article I wrote related to Google Analytics.

4. Length of Visit


This is the final metric in this set that is worth keeping an eye on. You want users to stay at your site and hit as many pages as possible during that time. Many advertising agencies consider pageviews to be the single most important metric. Social networking sites such as Facebook have mastered this metric and constantly introduce features that keep users on the site longer, and looking at more and more pages.

Conclusion: Remember this Equation

Deeper Visits = More Pageviews = Longer Time on Site = Greater Length of Visit

The next time you think you don’t have enough hits or visitors, try and steer your focus to these other core metrics. They will play a role in increasing the success of your site as a sticky site is one that will attract new users.

What do you think? :)

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