Website Metrics or Analytics; the Measurement of Website Traffic

Who is Visiting My Website and How are They Getting There?

The collection of data, the analysis thereof and the measurement of success and failure of said website traffic, is known as website metrics, insights or Analytics, often referred to as “Traffic Reports”.

Google Analytics, because of this search engine’s dominant market share, holds the most importance and is a good resource to consider, when set up and understood properly.

Since the advent of the Internet and unto present day, website traffic (hits to your website) is reduced to its most simplest form: Direct Traffic and Search Traffic.

Direct Traffic is the measurement of website visits that occur without a referring website (i.e. “referrer”) or in other words, website visitors who landed on your site by typing your URL into the browser directly and without being referred by a search engine or another website (back link). Good Direct Traffic is usually the result of viral phenomenon or other means of advertising with your website’s URL included in it. Such advertising in effect advertises your URL and eventually, the end user types it into the browser specifically and subsequently visits your website directly, as a result

Search Traffic is the result of SEO or Search Engine Optimization, which is the art and science of making a website search engine or “Google Friendly”, thus making it possible for it to be returned in a search engine’s results pages. A high percentage of website visitors as a result of Search Traffic is literally, traffic to your website from Search Engines based on keywords and location based searches, or your website URL and info being found on a website other than your own; Referrer Traffic or a result of a back link.

Analytics can be further divided into subgroups such as: Paid Search and Social Traffic or, traffic to your website from paid ads or from social media sites such as: Facebook, Instagram, You Tube or Twitter.

Analytics can be displayed in a variety of different ways, such as pie charts, flow charts, line graphs and the like; see example below of a Google Analytics dashboard/report.