For businesses that want to track how much traffic their website is receiving, a Google Analytics account is a no-brainer. However, while it’s easy to use this powerful application to measure traffic, how do you know if those visitors are engaged with your website content or just bouncing the second they hit your homepage? Engagement is as important as traffic – follow the four steps below to learn how to track this metric.
How do you measure engagement?
Just because a page receives a large amount of traffic, doesn’t mean it has quality content on it that visitors value. Half of the visitors to your most trafficked blog post or service page can easily bounce within seconds. So to figure out which pages your customers like, you need to measure engagement. And the easiest way to do that is by looking at the amount of time a visitor spends on a page.
Generally speaking, if a visitor is on a page for five minutes or more, they’re likely reading, watching or listening to some form of content you posted. Of course there’s the off chance that maybe he or she took an extended bathroom break after landing on your page or forgot to close it and continued surfing the web in another window. But if a consistent number of visitors are spending several minutes on a given page, you can feel confident that most of them are engaging with the content.
Why does engagement matter?
Simple. The more your visitors engage with your content, the more likely they’ll visit your website again or – even better – become a loyal customer.
You can measure engagement by following these four steps in Google Analytics:
1. Track engagement over a long period of time
We’re not just talking a month or two, but more like years. This will show you which pages are performing best in the long run. To do this, open Google Analytics. Then in the top right corner of the screen, input your date range and then click Apply.
2. Measure all pages
You need to look at time spent on all your pages to see what’s performing best. In the navigation bar to the left of your screen, click on the following in the order below:
- Behavior
- Site Content
- All Pages
3. Compare the average time visitors spend on a page
Under the main graph that displays visitor numbers to your site, you’ll see a search box with the word “advanced” next to it. To the right of that, you’ll see five buttons. Click on the second button from the right – the Comparison button. To be sure you’re clicking on the correct one, hover your mouse over it and the word “comparison” will pop up.
Slightly below the comparison button and to the left, choose Average time on page as your secondary metric.
4. Mind the Green bars
After you’ve followed the above steps, green bars will appear to the right of some of the pages displayed. The higher the bar, the greater amount of time a visitor is spending on a page.
With this data at your disposal, now you can understand what content your customers find valuable – and then focus on creating more of it.
Want to know more about how to gain valuable insights from your business data? Give us a call today.