Welcome back to my top 9 list for ways to evaluate your online traffic. (Find the top 3 on my last blog post). I'll let this shake out into a few more posts, with points 4 and 5 included here.
9 Ways to Evaluate Your Online Traffic (continued)
4. Pay attention to new vs. returning visitors
I've heard a lot of marketers rejoice when they see their "returning traffic" % go up. "Yes, they liked what they found before and they came back!" Well, not so fast. I encourage you to really think about your business blogging goals before you draw this conclusion. In my business (and maybe in yours) someone who comes back to my website over and over again is not necessarily a good thing. They're lingering. They're not moving onto the next step that will help us develop a relationship.
That why, to me, new visits are a more important metric to me. I don't plan on my website or my corporate blogs serving as a long-term nurturing site; I want it to engage people right off the bat so they can quickly move on. Obviously this may be different for membership-based businesses, etc.
5. Keep an eye on bounce rates and time on site
This is a basic one, but a lot of us ignore it. Would I rather have 50 people show up to my blogs and do nothing, or 10 show up, learn a bit more, and convert? Some of the classic issues that come back to high bounce rate are lack of relevancy, lack of fresh content, and bad design. If you have a professional blog or website with fresh, relevant content, you should see good results here.
To be continued again soon...what metrics are you using to evaluate your online traffic?
