How to Measure the Quality of your Website Traffic on Google Analytics

Francesca Taylor • August 3, 2022

Are you acquiring traffic to your website that isn’t translating into sales? Are you stuck wondering why this might be?

Google Analytics provides helpful tools to help you assess the quality of your traffic as well as the quantity, and these vital metrics could be key to identifying why your efforts aren't quite making those sales. At Infoserve, we use Google Analytics to gain insights into how customers use our client’s websites so we can implement the best strategy for them.

Why is quality of traffic important?

Unless your business goal is to increase brand awareness, the volume of traffic to your website is irrelevant if it isn’t accompanied by a strong conversion rate.

Think of it this way:

If you had 500 visitors per month with a 1% conversion rate, this would mean out of 500 people only 5 made a purchase.

While 500 visitors looks good on paper, it’s not a fantastic metric by which to measure the success of your campaign.

How to measure the quality of website traffic on Google Analytics

To measure quality of traffic on Google Analytics, you need to pay attention to a few specific KPIs (key performance indicators).

Pay attention to:

Engagement metrics
Conversion metrics
Relevance metrics

Engagement metrics

Pages per session

Pages per session is the average number of pages that a user visits on your website per session. This metric tells you how interested a user is in your content/service.

The value of this metric will depend on the architecture of your website and the service you provide.

For example, if you were an ecommerce business selling tea online, you would expect your customers to navigate to your desired action in more steps than a car repair service website. This is because, as a company selling products, you’ll want your users to visit multiple product pages before making their purchase.

How to find ‘pages per session’ on Google Analytics:

Acquisition > Overview > under the behaviour bar you’ll find ‘pages per session’.

Average session duration

Average session duration measures the average time your users spend on your website. This can be measured over any time period that you select, including daily, weekly, monthly and yearly.

The longer someone spends on your site, the more interested they are in your content.

This can also indicate quality of your content, effective internal linking and CTAs, and successful UX.

Average session duration still measures session duration if the site isn’t being actively used, for example if it’s open on a tab in the background. If a user is on your site for 30 minutes but doesn’t click anything, it will be counted as a bounce.

How to find average session duration on Google Analytics:

Audience > Overview > under overview, click ‘average session duration’

Exit rate

Exit rate tells you how often a user has left your site from specific pages. This also measures the rate at which someone has moved from one page on your website to another.

This will tell you how relevant your content is to your customer.

How to find exit rate on Google Analytics:

Behaviour > Overview > beneath ‘Pageviews’ graph on the far right, you’ll find ‘% Exit’.

Conversion metrics

Conversion rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who have landed on your site and completed your desired goal. Google Analytics allows you to set goals for your website and will measure each one separately.

This is one of your most valuable metrics as it directly measures the quality of your web traffic. It also tells you which goals you’re meeting and whether your content is converting visitors into customers.

Conversions > Goals > Overview

From here you’ll be able to select a specific goal using the drop down menu.

Relevance metrics

New vs returning visitors

New vs Returning visitors is an important metric to analyse when measuring the quality of your web traffic. This is because returning customers are considered more likely to make a purchase than newly acquired customers.

It is also important to note that if a large number of customers return to your website, it shows that they’ve had a positive experience, which is an incredibly beneficial piece of information to have at your disposal.

How to find new vs returning visitors on Google Analytics:

Audience > Behaviour > New vs Returning

Bounce rate

As far as analytics go, bounce rate tells you more about the quality of your content than it does visitors, but utilising it correctly can easily show you which pages need to be improved to keep valuable users on your website.

How to find bounce rate on Google Analytics:

Audience > Overview > Bounce Rate

User location

Geo-location is useful to companies with international interests, as well as small, local businesses. In this area of Google Analytics, you’ll find a user’s geo-location, as well as their online behaviour and acquisition.

Use this to discover how location impacts the quality of traffic to your website and whether you need to adapt your strategy for different regions.

How to find geo-location using Google Analytics:

Audience > Geo > Location

Not sure where to start?

Here at Infoserve, our web design experts are on hand to help you create and build a unique, functional and responsive website, and our PPC and SEO team help your website get found.

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