Website analytics explained

Your first port of call should be Google Analytics. It’s totally free, integrates with Adwords and will give you all the information you’ll ever need.

Just visit http://www.google.co.uk/analytics and sign up for an account. It should only take a few minutes. Google will the supply a few lines of code which need to be added to your website. Your web person should be able to do it in less than an hour.

You will then have access to a wide range of information about your site. Here are a few of the key numbers.

Bounce rateThis is the percentage of people who visit a website and leave within a few seconds without clicking on any of the links. The standard bounce rate is 30-45 per cent. This number basically tells us if visitors are seeing what they expect to see.

Percentage of new visitsThis is a very important metric if you’re looking to do any internet marketing, as it gives an idea of how many people coming to the site already know about it, as opposed to fresh prospects who have never come before. If you’re looking for new business, this number should be as high as possible!

Pages per visitThis is the amount of pages people view per visit to the site. This number should be as high as possible, as it’s a good indicator of user engagement. If the average number of pages viewed per visit is low, it means the information is not compelling enough for people to carry on any further. Guy Levine owns SEO company Web Marketing Advisor.

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