As an eCommerce business owner, you have a wealth of data, analytics, and other information at your fingertips. What that information tells you informs the actions you need to take to operate and grow your business — or at least, it should. But out of all that data, which should you pay the most attention to?
There are three key statistics related to website traffic that will help you determine both how you’re currently performing and what you should focus on to continue growing your business:
- Conversion rate
- Revenue by traffic funnel
- Website sessions.
Let’s take a look at these three statistics and why you should be keeping an eye on them for your eCommerce business.
Conversion Rate
The conversion rate tells you how many of your website visitors performed a specific action (such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, etc.). This tells you not only how much traffic you’re getting, but more importantly how much of that traffic is actively engaging with your site and how much of it is bouncing.
How to Find Your Conversion Rate
First, identify the action you want to track. Then take the number of visitors to your site who took that action within a given period of time and divide it by the total number of site visitors within that time period.
For example, if you have 50,000 visitors in one month and 1,000 of them purchased from your site, you have a conversion rate of 2%. (For comparison, in 2021 the average eCommerce business conversion rate was at 2.42%.)
What to Do with Your Conversion Rate Data
If your conversion rate is low and/or decreasing, but your traffic remains steady, it may mean that your visitors aren’t connecting with your website’s messaging or design. Set aside some time to analyze your website and make updates to improve its conversion capabilities.
Revenue by Traffic Funnel
Obviously, you want to be tracking your revenue, but it’s also important to break down where that revenue is coming from. When you track your revenue by traffic funnel, you’re looking at which channels (social media, search engines, etc.) are bringing in the most revenue.
How to Find Your Revenue by Traffic Funnel
You can find this data using Google Analytics or your preferred analytics tool. Be sure to look for which sources are bringing in the most sales — not just traffic.
What to Do with Your Revenue by Traffic Funnel Data
You might be surprised to learn which traffic funnels are actually bringing in the most revenue. If you find that you’re pouring most of your time, effort, and money into a channel that isn’t performing well revenue-wise, you might want to focus instead on improving your outreach via the channels that are already the most profitable.
Website Sessions
When it comes to website traffic, there are a few different metrics you can look at:
- Sessions (or Visits): One session is one visit to your website, no matter how many pages that user viewed during the session or how long they stayed.
- Pageviews: The number of pages viewed by anyone. If one visitor looked through five pages of your site (either all in one session or on different visits), and another visitor only opened one page, that’s six pageviews.
- Users (or Unique Visitors): This tells you roughly how many different people visited your site. One user can visit the site multiple times within a given period (creating multiple sessions), and can of course generate multiple pageviews.
Tracking sessions shows you how often your website is being visited, how long people are staying on your site, and — when analyzed along with pageviews and users — how they’re interacting with your site (such as how many pages the average user visits or how often they’re coming back).
How to Find Your Website Sessions
This information is readily available using Google Analytics, other analytics tools, or your site hosting platform. You might also want to look at the number of sessions generated by each traffic source, again so you can focus your attention on marketing to the channels that give the best results.
What to Do with Your Website Sessions Data
The better you understand your website traffic — where those users are coming from, what actions they take on your site, when and why they leave, etc. — the better equipped you’ll be to bring in more traffic and drive conversion.
Data Informs Results
Understanding and tracking the right metrics is a vital first step to increasing sales and growing your business. But it’s still only the first step. Once you have a solid grasp of how your business is performing according to these key data points, you’ll need to apply that understanding to build on what’s already working and pivot away from what isn’t.
