Your website is your company’s online storefront. You might have a website that you use to sell products, or maybe you just want people to be able to contact you for more information. Regardless of what your website does, there are many things that can affect how successful it is at doing its job and bringing in revenue. One of the most important things for any website owner to do is track visitor activity and improve their website from those results.
What is visitor activity tracking and why should you care about it
Visitor activity is simply tracking website visitors. This can be done through a variety of different methods and there are many ways to use the information that you get from it. You might want to track visitor activity when things such as website traffic, conversions, time on page, or other key website metrics don’t make sense anymore. With so much data out there about how people interact with websites now, it is critical for website owners to understand their audience in order to improve their website’s experience and performance.
There are several tools available today that will help website owners do this kind of thing including Google Analytics and Hotjar which have both become popular options because they provide great results at an affordable price point without requiring any special programming knowledge or skill sets.
How to track visitor activity on your website
Now that you know why website owners should track visitor activity, it’s time to look at how website visitors can do just that. Visitor tracking can improve traffic intelligence information which gives feedback with Real-Time updates and interactions with your website. Let’s take a look at two of the best tools available (Google Analytics & Hotjar) and see what they offer website owners for tracking visitor data as well as improving their websites’ performance through a better understanding of audience behavior.
Google Analytics is one of the most popular options on the market today because it provides easy-to-understand metrics for website traffic in order to help website owners improve both their sites and conversions. Google Analytics runs completely in the background so there is nothing for your users to download or install which means all information comes from a real live person visiting your site rather than some automated program.
Hotjar is another website visitor tracking tool that website owners can choose to use in order to help improve their websites’ performance and conversions. Hotjar has a few more tricks up its sleeve than Google Analytics when it comes to website visitors, but it does require different user permissions before they will run correctly on your site which means you have started off with some sort of opt-in program for website visitors interested in giving you feedback about them or your website. This might be difficult depending on the type of business you are running so make sure this is something that makes sense for both parties before moving forward with any other plans involving Hotjar as part of your marketing mix.
How to use the data for improving your website
Now that website owners have started tracking website visitors and visitor behavior, it’s time to make use of the data in order to improve their website. Here are a few ideas for what you can do if you want to increase website traffic and conversions:
- Use your analytics information to help create better pages or items on your site that will encourage more people to convert (buy something from your website). Make sure all of these new things are consistent with each other so they don’t confuse users while also being different enough from old content to not become repetitive.
- Include website visitor feedback into any changes made by making an effort towards improving specific aspects of your website based on common complaints/requests from them. This allows you to find out how website visitors feel about website content, the website’s design, or anything else that might be causing problems.
Common mistakes with visitor activity tracking
Like anything, website owners need to be careful of what they do with their analytics information. Here is some common mistakes website owners make when tracking visitor activity:
- Not using website visitor feedback in order to improve the overall experience or performance of your site. This feedback is one of four cornerstones for improving website traffic and conversions so it should always be taken into consideration before making any changes on a website that could affect customer happiness or how well visitors convert (buy something from your website).
- Focusing too much on higher numbers rather than focusing on the conversion rates shows you where people have dropped off during their visit. If more people leave without converting because they didn’t see an item or content that interested them enough while also seeing others.
With the help of visitor activity tracking, you can identify your customers’ needs and desires to improve their experience on your website. If these ideas don’t seem like they are a fit for your website, you can always go back to the drawing board and figure out what will work best.