Dive Into Your Clickstream: Understanding Your Web Analytics

Enter the Clickstream

Web analytics tends to start with collecting and analyzing “clickstream” data - the information that can be collected directly from visitors to your webpages using javascript, cookies, images, or other tags that act as tracking codes. Here are 15 questions regarding your visitors (clickstream data) you can answer, examine, and visualize through website analytics tools like Google Analytics: 

1. Where are visitors entering and exiting your site?
2. How many people visit specific pages? What content is drawing the most attention?
3. How many people immediately leave? Which content is failing to retain them?
4. How many people are first-time or return visitors?
5. How long do people stay on your site?
6. Where are your visitors geographically located?
7. What browsers, operating systems, devices, and screen sizes are they using?
8. What keywords are driving people to your site through search? What pages are delivering search traffic? 
9. How do visitors flow through your site? Are they efficient and inefficient paths? Do they see your intended message or offering?
10. How much response does each call to action get?
11. What referrers are directing visitors to your site? From which search engines (organic results or marketing campaign), social networks, blogs, web pages, etc? What content are they being directed to?
12. How fast do your pages load? When and where are the peaks and lows?
13. How are the specific goals you’ve defined in the analytics tools being met?
14. How are your pay-per-click campaigns working?
15. What additional demographic data is available for each of the questions above? 
     

That's great - But What Do I Do with It?

The answer to each of these questions can help you optimize the user experience, raise your search engines rankings, tailor your message expand your audience or focus on a specific segment, and build data-driven personalized relationships online.

The answers to these questions are often quite valuable to your business. Some are immediately apparent, such as the answer to “How much response does each call to action get?” Others, however, may seem to have less business value, at least at face value. For example, “why do I care where my web visitors are geographically located?”

To use an example, one of our clients has offices in three states. After reviewing their traffic sources, we identified a great deal of traffic from two states where they did not have offices. The visitors from these two states matched their target demographic too. So, analytics helped our client identify potential locations to expand their business. 
 

Building a Better Business

When it comes to data analytics, clickstream sources are often the most available to business owners. You can use these 15 questions to adjust your business strategy in an informed and insightful manner.

For a more comprehensive view of how you can use analytics, data-driven website optimization, and search engine, Sandstorm offers full consulting and implementation services that support and improve your marketing strategy.