Website traffic is the amount of visitors and visits (sessions) a website receives or in simple words, website traffic is the number of people visiting your website. Here, traffic refers to the users who visits a website. For example, when you visit a website, the communication which happens between your desktop/laptop/mobile and the website server constitute the Website traffic.
This metric is a common way of measuring the popularity or effectiveness of any website. Although there are many other metrics also involved when measuring any website popularity, website traffic is the important metric as this tells how many real users are visiting a particular site.
Now, traffic does not always mean that it is generated by users (human beings) only. Artificial traffic ( non-human traffic) can be generated by using bots. The traffic generated by bots is useful for testing purposes but to measure the popularity of any website, it is important to remove the bots traffic while measurement.
Also, there can be more than one source of traffic such as direct traffic, organic traffic (often known as free traffic), referral, paid and social traffic. Organic is the most popular source of traffic for most of the websites as it is free and highly targeted and if used correctly can give you good profits as well. For eCommerce and Real estates websites, direct traffic is considered more valuable.
Important terms related to Website traffic
Many people think that visitors, views, visits are all same thing but that is not correct. It’s important to know the correct meaning of all the terms from the start so that you can correctly check your traffic data and make informed decisions.
- Page views: Whenever a browser loads your website, a page view is recorded in Google Analytics. It means even if a single user reloads the same page of your website, then that would be recorded as two page views. In simple words, whenever the tracking code is loaded in the browser, a page view is recorded. This metric helps in understanding the behavior of users on any site.
- Visits: A visit is something which is recorded whenever someone visits your website from a referring source and even if the user visits multiple pages of the site, it will be counted as only one visit. That is why usually pageview counts are higher than the visits count.
- Sessions: A session is the period time a user is actively engaged with your website. All usage data (Screen Views, Events, etc.) is associated with a session.
- Average visit duration: This is the total time spent by users on your site or the average length of a Session. And higher average visit duration is always better as it means that your users are more interested in your site.
- Bounce rate: The percentage of single-page sessions in which there was no interaction with the page. A bounced session has a duration of 0 seconds.
- Returning vs New Users: A new user is someone who has never visited your site before while a returning visitor has visited your site in the past. (Google Analytics uses cookies to track this so, this report is not very accurate as if a person visits your site from desktop and then on their mobile phones, then they will be recorded as new visitors and not as returning visitor).
Measurement of Website Traffic
When someone visits a site, their computer communicates with that site’s server. Every website have at least one web page and every web page is made up of many different distinct files. Whenever the files are served, a hit gets recorded.
A single web page can result in multiple hits as every web page has multiple files (images etc.). Whenever a visitor visits any site, at least one page view is generated but more page views can be generated if the visitor visits multiple pages in a single visit.
Website traffic measurement and monitoring is very vital to every online business success. It’s important as by analyzing the statistics of visitors, it is possible to see how the site is performing and how can it be improved. By studying the website traffic reports, you can optimize your website and provide the best possible experience to your visitors while maximizing the revenue.
Advantages of having a high website traffic
There are millions of active websites present on the Internet today and if you want to get results from your websites like business leads or sales, earning more money etc. it’s very important to have traffic on the website and high traffic means more leads, sales or money.
If your site is not having traffic then it just cannot survive for too long. That being said, there are many advantages of having a website with high traffic such as:
- More traffic means more revenue.
- Targeted traffic or people who are interested in what you are offering through your website are more likely to stay with you and/or your business and also refer your website to others as well.
- More traffic means more brand awareness and more exposure for your website.
- Other than making money, more website traffic, in the long run, can allow you to expand your business and your business profits, hire more employees, increase your offerings (products or services), open new locations etc.
- If you have a blog then with higher website traffic you can get sponsored posts, direct advertisers, and ultimately more profits.
- Conversions, sales, and traffic are related. You just cannot get more sales or conversions without traffic so, with high website traffic, conversions and sales both increases.
However, higher traffic itself is no guarantee of increased sales or more revenue. Traffic must be targeted or at least related to what your website is all about. Generic traffic cannot make even a small dent in your earning. 200 targeted visitors are more powerful than 1000 generic visitors. So, always try to get targeted traffic only by whichever method you use.
What are the three most important things a website needs to be successful? “Traffic, traffic, and traffic”.
But don't get me wrong ... Traffic must be driven to your Web Site from your Social Media Tools.
Be sure not to drive traffic to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram..... They wont thank you for that !
Sources: PHMC GPE LLC - Marketing 91 - Coffee Break
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London UK