Web analytics: everything you need to know to improve your site’s UX

Do you know what people do when they visit your website, so you can make decisions to improve their experience and achieve your business goals?

Do you feel like you're missing out on valuable insights and opportunities because you don't understand your website user metrics and data? 

Web analytics may seem confusing at first, but once you grasp the basics, it becomes an invaluable resource to improve the user experience (UX), drive more conversions, and increase revenue.

This guide is an introduction to web analytics: what it is and why it’s important, including examples of metrics to track and the tools you need. You’ll also learn how to combine web and behavior analytics to get a complete picture of what users do on your site—and why.

What is web analytics?

Web analytics is the process of collecting, analyzing, and reporting data to understand and optimize how people use and interact with your website. Its ultimate goal is to help you understand your users through data, so you can optimize your site's performance and improve UX.

It provides insights into visitor behavior, traffic sources, content performance, and conversion rates, helping businesses make informed decisions to improve their online presence and achieve their goals.

You collect and analyze user data using web analytics tools to track what happens on your site and answer important questions, including

• How many people visit your site?

• Where do they come from?

• Which pages do they visit?

• How long do visitors spend on your most important pages?

• How many leave after visiting a single page?

These insights help ensure your site is user-friendly and truly resonates with your target audience, so you can create better user experiences.

Top 4 reasons web analytics is important for your business

Web analytics is great for website optimization, helping you track what’s happening on your site and identify areas for improvement in terms of content and the overall user experience.

When done right, web analytics helps you increase traffic, conversions, and return on investment (ROI). Let’s take a look at how.

1. Learn who your website attracts and where they come from

Knowing who visits your website and where they come from helps you better understand different user personas. Web analytics helps you understand more about user demographics, goals, and behavior, so you can tailor your website's content and product offerings to their specific needs.

You can also identify which channels drive the most traffic and conversions to your website, and how you can improve their performance. 

2. Understand how users interact with your website 

Knowing how users navigate your website, such as what pages they visit and how long they spend on each page, helps you understand what they're looking for and what they value. This web analytics data lets you give users what they need to perform a desired action on your site. 

It also helps you create content strategies and campaigns that resonate with your audience. 

3. Identify the pages that drive the most traffic on your website

Knowing which pages drive the most traffic on your website helps you understand user preferences, so you can make informed decisions about your website and marketing efforts. 

Then, you can use these learnings to improve your content strategy, conversion rate, and user engagement. 

4. See how many users your website converts 

Website analytics also helps with conversion rate optimization—increasing the percentage of visitors who become subscribers or paying customers.

Knowing your conversion rate lets you determine how effectively your website's content drives visitors to take desired actions, whether that’s sales or leads. By monitoring your conversion rate, you can see where users drop off in the marketing funnel, helping you make changes to improve the user experience and increase conversion.

For example, say a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company wants to increase the number of signups. They can see how many visitors sign up for a free trial, purchase a subscription, or drop off, by using web analytics to track the conversion rate. The SaaS company can then make changes such as simplifying the signup process or providing more information about the tool to increase its customer base and revenue.

Now that we know how web analytics benefits you, let’s go over 3 web analytics metrics you should track. 

3 types of web analytics metrics to track 

As we explained above, traditional web analytics helps you understand who visits your website and how they interact with its content. You can use tools like Contentsquare or Google Analytics to get this data.

Whichever tool you choose, here are some critical web analytics metrics you should track.

Stay on top of key web analytics metrics with a customizable dashboard in Contentsquare

1. Acquisition-related metrics

Acquisition-related metrics measure how you get website visitors. It helps you understand who your visitors are and how they landed on your website. 

These metrics include

• Users: visitors who initiated at least one session during a selected date range. This metric helps you measure your audience size and determine whether you're reaching the right people.

• New users: the number of unique visitors in a specific date range. This metric helps you determine if you are attracting new traffic—people visiting your site for the first time.  

• Sessions: all user interactions within a specified time frame. This metric helps you understand what users do when they’re on your website. 

2. Behavior-related metrics

Behavior analytics metrics measure how people behave when they land on your website. They help you understand user behavior patterns, such as your most popular pages, how long users stay on a page, and what actions they take on the site.

These metrics include

• Bounce rate: tracks activity when a user visits a website page and then leaves without viewing another. For example, if a user finds one of your blog posts through a search and reads it without clicking on any internal links before leaving, they 'bounced'. 

• Exit rate: how often a user has left your website from a single page. When you know which pages visitors are exiting from the most and at what percentage (known as the exit rate), you can determine which pages you need to improve.

• Pages per session: the average number of pages users view on your website during a session. This metric lets you determine how engaged visitors are on your website. For example, a high value shows that visitors actively explore and discover helpful information on your website. 

• Session duration: the average time a user spends on a website in a single session. A long session duration may indicate visitors find the website's content relevant and engaging, while a short session may indicate the website fails to meet their needs or expectations.

3. Conversion-related metrics

Conversion-related metrics measure how many people take a desired action after landing on your website, revealing how many users convert and how much revenue you get. 

These metrics include

• Ecommerce conversion rate: the percentage of visitors who complete a purchase on the site. This metric helps you see how effectively your website converts visitors into paying customers.

• Transactions: this metric provides insights into the number of customer purchases, the average value of the transactions, and the total revenue you generate from sales.

• Revenue: the amount of money you generate from the transactions on your website. This metric tracks the return on investment for your marketing campaigns and advertising efforts.

To show how a website performs, web analytics tools track quantitative data—every page view, bounce, drop-off, conversion, traffic source, and country of origin. However, while web analytics show you what is going on with your website, it doesn't tell you why.

Combine web analytics with behavior analytics, digital experience, and digital monitoring insights to get a complete picture of what users and customers want from your pages and products, where they get confused, and where they focus their attention.

“With web analytics, you see a clean set of events, like: someone visited the homepage → clicked on a button → visited a pricing page, and you get information such as how much time they spent on a page. The problem is: what happened in between those things? And what happened when they got there? Maybe the time on the page is high because many people are scrolling down, and they’re lost and can’t find something. Maybe they got to the page by mistake, and now they’re stuck. Looking at what happens between those events is where it becomes really interesting. That's where you get the juicy stuff.”

David Darmanin, Founder, Hotjar (part of the Contentsquare group)

3 ways to pair web analytics with behavior analytics 

Let’s say your web analytics tool reveals a page that gets a lot of traffic but has few conversions. 

You know you need to change something on your website, but how do you make sense of this data? How do you know what to do next? You can make educated guesses about the problem, but you could be wrong and miss out on revenue-generating opportunities. 

By combining quantitative and qualitative data, you get a holistic picture of your UX so you can make changes that improve the experience. That’s where behavior analytics comes in.

An all-in-one experience intelligence platform like Contentsquare (that’s us 👋) combines web and behavior analytics to enrich your data and help you understand what users want, care about, and struggle with. By complementing your web analytics with behavior analytics, you can answer questions like

• What are users interested in, and what are they completely ignoring? What do visitors think as they scroll down each page?

• Are they leaving because something on the page is broken?

• Where do they get stuck and struggle on your website or app?

• What actions do users take just before leaving your website or app?

• What do users want or miss on the pages they visit?

Together with web analytics, these answers give you a full picture of what’s really happening on your website. Here are 3 ways to pair them.

1. Use heatmaps to identify page elements that influence conversions

Heatmaps are a powerful way to understand what users do on individual pages on your website, allowing you to visualize and understand complex data at a glance. 

Insights from heatmaps help you identify which buttons and calls to action (CTAs) receive the most and least interactions and whether or not users scroll to the bottom of the page. With heatmaps, you can increase the likelihood of people using your site more often, staying longer on your most important pages, and making purchases.

Contentsquare’s Heatmaps tool shows you where users clicked on a specific page, how far they scrolled, and what they looked at or ignored

For example, ecommerce platform Blibli used Heatmaps to understand how their page layouts were affecting conversions for crucial campaigns. When they spotted key elements—like deals and vouchers—weren’t getting enough exposure, they optimized the page to improve exposure rates. 

Blibli's heatmap analysis showing exposure rate before and after optimization

These small changes had huge results, leading to an additional $11.6K revenue in just 1 day.

2. Use session replays to see your website through users' eyes

Session replays (also known as session recordings) capture and replay the user’s journey across your website to observe how people move around, what they click on or ignore while browsing, and whether they encounter any issues or obstacles along the way.

Contentsquare’s Session Replay tool captures on-page activities, including mouse movements, scrolls, clicks, and taps

💡 Pro tip: filter your session replays to see real actions users took while on your most and least popular web pages. For example, you can review the recordings of customers who left your website in frustration, experienced errors, or are part of a particular customer segment.

3. Collect feedback to improve conversion data

Collecting feedback—whether it’s through user interviews, an on-page feedback widget, or surveys—eliminates guesswork and provides you with key insights from your users. You can inquire directly with them about which aspects of your site they enjoy and which they would like to see improved. 

With Contentsquare, you can also jump straight from a piece of feedback to the associated session replay, showing exactly how that user navigated your site before responding, giving you even more context.

💡 Pro tip: placing an exit-intent survey on relevant pages lets you learn more about why visitors are leaving your site. Check pages with the highest exit rates from your web analytics tool to find the perfect page to trigger an exit poll.

With this data, you can use Contentsquare to display a survey on the page and even target users based on specific criteria, like device or customer segment.

Launch exit-intent surveys on key pages to learn why people are leaving

Combine web analytics and behavior analytics to watch conversions soar

Web analytics is great for understanding what’s happening on your website. However, numbers alone aren’t enough—they don’t give you the complete picture of the user’s experience or reveal whether they’re frustrated or truly satisfied. That’s why you also need to use behavior analytics tools like heatmaps, session replays, and surveys. 

Using a comprehensive, easy-to-use, all-in-one platform like Contentsquare brings your web and behavior analytics together. It helps you identify bugs, broken elements, and potential blockers so you can optimize your users' experience and make their journey as smooth as possible.

FAQs about web analytics