Marketing Jargon Buster: Traffic

What is ‘traffic’?

Traffic refers to the number of visitors that land on your website.

Website traffic is monitored – these days, mostly via Google Analytics – to assess which parts of a website are popular, or not. This assists businesses in knowing what is working on their website, and what needs some tweaking.

RELATED: 8 signs you need to invest in a new website.

How is traffic measured?

To help you understand the behaviour of visitors to your website, and how successful your site is in terms of providing visitors with what they want or converting visits to sales, traffic is measured in the following ways:

  • The total number of visitors
  • Average page views per session
  • Average session duration
  • Average time spent on page
  • Most popular visit times
  • Most popular pages
  • Most popular entry pages
  • Most popular exit pages
  • Bounce rate per page
  • Top paths, which identifies the way most visitors go through the site.

How does measuring traffic help my business?

Understanding the way visitors interact with your website helps you identify what is or is not working on the site, such as:

  • User Experience (UX) & User Interface (UI)
  • The sales funnel
  • Conversion points
  • Broken links, etc.

RELATED: 6 best UX practices every business owner should use.

If you’re an eCommerce site, analysing both the source, segmentation and behaviour of your traffic can assist you in how and where you advertise your business online, so you are targeting high-value potential customers.

While seemingly one of the simplest marketing terms on the books, understanding website traffic is key to growing your business online.