Do you know where your traffic comes from?

Let’s talk traffic!  When you look at your website analytics, you probably look at items like: 

• Visits
• Pageviews
• Number of pages per visit
• Time on site
• Bounce rate

These are all great things to look at.  But do you know WHERE your traffic comes from?  For some websites (international companies, news sites, blogs), where the traffic comes from may not matter to the bottom line.  However, if you are a local business, such as a restaurant or doctor, the location demographic comes into play.  

We recently discovered that only 18% of traffic for a new client comes from the area they do business in.  This was certainly eye-opening and now that we know, we can work to correct this problem. 

Let me tell you how to find out using Google Analytics:

1. Open up your Google Analytics using analytics.google.com. 
2. Set a date range.  Three to six months should be good.
3. Under Audience, select Demographics/Location. 
4. This will show you the breakdown by country. 
5. Selecting United States will then show you a breakdown of traffic by state. 
6. Selecting a specific state will then show you a breakdown of traffic by city. 

With this information you can determine the percentage of traffic you received from the area you serve.  Simple enough, huh? 

Don’t have Google Analytics installed on your website?  Need help reviewing your stats?  Email me at glenneth@firstviewonline.com. 

Posted by Glenneth Reed