One of the keys to successful marketing is having a clear understanding of who your customers are and what they need from you. If you operate a brick-and-mortar business, you can see who your customers are, notice what they do inside the store, and listen to their questions and comments. If your customers are visiting your website, the picture you get depends on the data you gather. The following are the 7 most important website metrics you can track in order to profile your visitors.
- Personal Information
The best way to find out personal details, like a customer’s name, age, and sex, is to ask, but most visitors to your site will not want to fill out a lengthy form. One way around this problem is to use a strategy known as progressive profiling, which involves building a profile over repeated visits. You can visit SharpSpring.com to learn more about how it works.
- Number Of Visitors
Another key metric is the number of visitors your site receives at different times of the day. Are your customers showing up primarily during the work day, during commuting hours, or in the evening? If you know when your visitors are showing up, you can plan the best times to release new content or announce a special sale.
- Location Of Visitors
Learning the geographic location of your visitors can help you to understand how well you’re reaching customers in different states or regions. If you find that visitors from Georgia, for example, make fewer purchases than others, you can target that region by featuring Georgia customers in your content.
- Referring Sites
Referring sites are those that send visitors to your site via links. Learning what sites your visitors are coming from can give you a lot of information about what they’re interested in. You can also see how well your own social media marketing is working and which platform is sending the most traffic.
- Device And Browser
By learning what devices and browsers your visitors are using (or not using), you can discover ways to improve your responsive web design. If you compare visitors according to the device or browser they use, you may be able to see that some have a higher bounce rate than others. Your website may not be displaying correctly on mobile devices, for example, or it may not look the same in different browsers.
- Time Spent
It’s also important to see how much time visitors are spending on your site and on which pages they’re spending the most time. This is the best metric for understanding what your visitors want from your site. If you’re investing time in content that is routinely ignored, you may want to revise your content strategy, for example.
- Visitors’ Actions
Finally, it’s crucial to track specific actions of visitors on your site, especially purchases and sign-ups. These actions communicate where value lies in the eyes of your customers, and they also tell you who your most valuable customers are.
Metrics like these allow you to get a detailed picture of your target customers and create personas based on their characteristics. They also provide information you can use to make small tweaks that can enhance your website’s performance.
