Interpreting Website Analytics

Awareness, evaluation, conversion, retention: how can I better my business using website analytics?


It’s one thing to be regularly creating high quality content. It’s another for that content to be well marketed.

At the Bristol office, we agree: Good content marketing is all about information and application.  

In a past blog about creating customer profiles, we explained that pinpointing your target audience would enable you to produce higher quality content.

Website analytics are useful for the same reason. 

Every piece of data that your website gathers can provide your business with invaluable insight. 

In our work producing content strategies for Bristol and London startups, we introduce brands to data analysis by breaking it into four stages. 

Stage One: Awareness

Stage one is geared towards new website visitors, coming to your site for the very first time. 

Key data at this stage?

  • Number of new site visitors
  • Number of direct new site visitors (people who typed your website directly into Google and went straight there)
  • Percentage of new site visitors versus returning site visitors (How loyal are your customers? Does the number fluctuate? If yes, does the fluctuation coincide with ad campaigns/sales/anything else that your business is doing?)

Let’s take the number of direct new site visitors as an example. 

Essentially, direct new site visitor numbers can demonstrate the effectiveness of your advertising.

If you put up an advertisement featuring your URL, but the number of direct new site visitors doesn’t increase, then something needs to be changed.  

Are you targeting the wrong people? Using ineffective advertising? Not offering potential customers the right services?

Paying attention to analytics will allow you to go back to the drawing board when you notice that things aren’t working. 

And, when featuring your URL causes an increase in direct new site visitor numbers, you’ll know that your advertising is paying off.

Stage Two: Evaluation

At this stage, we’re looking for insight into the commitment level of site visitors. 

Are people subscribing to your blog? Are they clicking through to your Instagram page and following you there?

Key data at this stage?

  • Site visitor frequency
  • Percentage of site visitors who click through call to action advertisements/internal links
  • Number of returning new direct visitors

Analytics can show you how many click-throughs your calls to action (Buy this! Read this! Look at this!) receive. 

If the call to action click percentage is high, your content marketing is working as it should, converting visitors into interested potential customers. 

Stage Three: Conversion

In this crucial stage, we use analytics to study how well businesses turn potential customers into actual customers.

Key data at this stage?

  • Conversion rates
  • Best-selling unit types
  • Average total order value

Conversion analytics can tell you how many people clicked through a brand communication and purchased. 

Having access to this data will tell you:

  1. Which offers work for your business 
  2. Which offers don’t work for your business
  3. Which offers, based on 1 and 2, should be promoted in future.

Stage Four: Retention

In the fourth and final stage, we’re focused on customer satisfaction. The most important question: Are your customers happy?

You will generally be able to gauge your customer satisfaction level from social media interaction and buzz. Are people raving about you? Are they complaining about you? Are they indifferent? 

Other key data at this stage?

  • Percentage of customers with membership (if membership is being offered)
  • Overall membership numbers (Is the total number of memberships increasing, decreasing or stagnant?)
  • Number of returning customers 

Imagine, for example, that your business is offering a membership subscription to a product or service. 

By keeping track of membership numbers, you’ve provided your business with a set of analytics. 

These analytics will enable you to see how many members you’re gaining and losing. You will be able to constantly evaluate the popularity and worth of whatever is being offered. 

To learn about more analytical data worth considering, like bounce and exit rates, check out this Copypress blog

At Impressona, we specialise in content marketing solutions. We’d love to help make sense of your analytics.

Whether you’re Bristol-based or further afield, please get in touch if you’d like to find out more. 


Ellis Hartley-McDonald

Ellis is part of Impressona's social media team. Within his background in marketing, he has worked in several marketing areas and business industries.

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