“More is better.” “One can never have too much.” “The more the merrier.”
These familiar phrases all make sense, right? We live in a world where abundance is a good thing and quantity is king. And nowhere is this philosophy more prevalent than in the field of website performance analysis. Site managers are constantly trying to come up with ways to drive as much traffic to their site as they possibly can. On the surface they would appear to have good reasons for thinking this way. More traffic, generally speaking, translates to more visitors and more visitors would seem likely to yield more potential business.
But let’s step back and take a closer look. If you run a website, your ultimate goal is not exactly to bring in traffic; your goal is to bring in customers. And while you may be able to figure out how to drive large amounts of traffic to your site, what exactly does that traffic look like? You are looking for folks who intend to do more than just pop in and then leave. What you really want are people who are going to stick around and eventually convert. Let the tire-kickers stay home. It makes a whole lot more sense to focus on the folks who are serious about the stuff on your site.
Unfortunately, a lot of website managers focus too much on quantity and too little on the quality of their website visitors. They often find out the hard way that more traffic does not always translate to more real customers or to more actual sales. So how can you tell whether you are getting quality visitors to your site? Here are a few things you can look at:
- See where your visitors are coming from.
- Measure your repeat visitors.
- Notice which pages on your site are being accessed the most.
- Measure duration of site visits.
- Pay attention to bounce rate.
If you know something about the type of visitor you are trying to attract, then one of the most valuable pieces of information you can learn is where your visitors are coming from. In other words, find out the web sites that visitors were navigating just prior to reaching your site. This type of information can easily be found in web traffic reports. If a high percentage of your visitors are being referred from a high-quality site, or from a site that you know specifically targets your ideal demographic, then you know you are getting good quality traffic.
Generally speaking, loyal visitors are high quality visitors. And one of the most reliable indicators of loyalty is the returning visitor rate. If most of your traffic is the drive-by type, where visitors stop in once never to be seen or heard from again, then a high volume of traffic is not necessarily that valuable. On the other hand, a large amount of repetition from your visitors is a good sign that there is a high level of customer commitment to your service or product.
On almost all websites, the default (home) page is the one that records the most visits. This is to be expected. However, if a large number of your home page visits are unique (meaning that the home page is the only page on your site visited), then your site may be experiencing low quality traffic. Your visitors are apparently not interested enough in your services or products to explore further. If on the other hand, one or more other pages on your site are showing a particularly high volume of traffic, it could mean that your visitors are showing interest in some or all of your site material.
Average time on site is a great indicator of visitor engagement. The more time a person spends on your site, the greater the chance that he or she is truly interested in what your site has to offer. Of course, the statistic could also be deceiving because visitors may often leave a window open for long periods of time while going off and doing something else. But if you are seeing large numbers of very short site visits, it’s a pretty good sign that your site is not attracting visitors who are finding what they want.
What is “bounce rate”? Simply put, it is the proportion of visitors that leave the site after viewing just one page. It is an indicator of site relevance. A high bounce rate is a sign that visitors are not interested in what you are offering or are not finding what they are looking for. A low bounce rate, on the other hand, is a good sign that your visitors are actually potential customers.
Is more always better? No, not by a long shot. We all want more people to look at us, but sometimes we confuse more visibility for better visibility. When assessing your website, you need to look at not just the quantity of visitors you are generating, but also the quality of those visitors. When you do this, you may often find that less is more.
Brendan Cruickshank has worked in the online job search industry for the last eight years. Because of his insightful perspective, he is often quoted by major publications on issues related to jobs and employment. Currently, he works for Juju.com.
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