WEB METRIC: UNIQUE VISTOR METRIC

Last time we looked at the page visit metric and why it's considered a foundational metric. In this blog posting, we'll delve into the "unique visitor metric".  When you visit a website or blog for the first time, you are not only considered a new visitor, but also a unique visitor. If you leave the page and return days or even weeks later, you'll still be considered a unique visitor. This type of metric is referred to as visitor characterisation metric. 

While foundational metrics provide the basis for which all other metrics can be based.  Visitor characterisation metrics afford you the opportunity to truly understand whom your visitors are, where they spend their time on your page, how long they're on your site, how much time is spent on specific pages, buying behaviour, etc. 

Let's take someone who loves to travel, but prefers visiting European countries. Though there are many destinations available, this individual tends to frequent those websites that provide details on European travel. So if you own a travel agency, for example, knowing that Visitor Doe visits your site every quarter, but only conducts searches related to European destinations that may result in ticket sales for these destinations is important. 

It's generally accepted that marketing messages are intended to reach as wide an audience as possible.  This being the case, why would it be meaningful for businesses to track their unique visitors? Going back to the travel agency example, why should it matter to the travel agency that Visitor Doe, spends more time on travel packages for European destinations and not just that Visitor Doe is a repeating visitor who has already booked vacations with its agency? 

Now consider yourself to be the owner of a travel agency, and the metric that your agency tracks is not unique visitors but only page visits. Visitor Doe visits your website and clicks on the European destinations tab. Visitor Doe visits your website six times in two weeks, spending roughly 30 minutes with each visit. Your page visits metric also reveals that there is interest in both airline and cruise packages for European destinations. Your agency would therefore be of the view that you've had six visitors who could become potential customers for European destinations packages. Consequently, you may determine that you need to capitalise on what appears to be an upsurge in interest for European destinations by sweetening the packages offerings. Mistakenly of this view,  and utilising the web analytics data for page views you adjust your European packages, maybe lowering some prices in anticipation this will attract more visitors to your site and result in conversions (ticket/cruise purchases), which could also lead to referrals. The analytics tracking solely page visits, provides you with a flawed measurement. This type of inaccurate data results in poor decision making which can only hurt your travel agency. 

That's why, tracking unique visitors is crucial. If the travel agency had unique visitors as a metric, it would have been known that rather than six different visitors in two weeks, there was only one visitor who needed to be persuaded into conversion.

Imagine the difference if Visitor Doe was greeted by, Hello Visitor Doe how may we help you today? Tracking unique visitors allows for a level of personalisation with your visitor (customer). Customer (visitor) engagement through personalisation, should be considered a fundamental element of any marketing strategy; making the metric unique visitor among the most significant for any website or blog.

So until next time, I'll leave you with this short YouTube video that breaks down the metric unique visitor. 

WEB METRIC: PAGE VISITS

Peter Drucker is attributed with saying "you can't improve what you can't measure". There can be no truer words in the world of marketing. No matter how good you think your marketing strategy is there'll always be room for improvement. Even if you're at the top of your respective industry, resting on your laurels is a sure way to lost customers, market share and eventually impact your profit margin.

So what's to keep you at the top of your game? Data, data and even more data!

Compiling and understanding data related to your customers and their behaviour is as essential to your success as the products or services you offer. This is even more so if you operate in the digital realm. Even though, websites may now be considered a 'traditional' tool for business interaction, with the explosion of social media, websites remain a critical way to engage with your customers. Case and point, leading online retailer Amazon or streaming giant Netflix. They both have very successful apps and a strong social media presence, but neither one has removed their website as an additional medium for interacting with their customers. Could it be that data, has proven that their websites are still crucial to their operations?

How can data be used in relation to a website? Simple, data comes in the form of web metrics. According to Google, web metrics is defined as, a variety of measurements made on a given website in order to better track its performance and statistics." Mastery of this key feature will aid your business in growing from strength to strength. 

Page visits is one such metric your business may wish to track. A page visit means that a visitor reached your page from an external source. It could be that utilisation of a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing was used and your website or blog came up, resulting in a page visit. Or visitors could input your url taking them directly to your site. This would also count as page visits. 

A page visit is considered one of the four foundational metrics of web analytics. If you are a homeowner, you would understand that your home started with the building of your house. A house can only start with a foundation, from which all other elements are erected. Building a house doesn't start with the electrics, as this is among the final stages of the building process. So too, your house did not become your home until furnishings were added, you moved in and personalised it to match your unique style. Even if you bought your house furnished, that was the foundation. You then built on this, making it your own. All things must start with a foundation, web metrics is therefore no different.

Being able to track page visits will allow you to know the count of persons visiting the different pages on your site and which external sources are leading visitors to these pages. Why is this important? Understanding this, will enable you to better target and/or adjust your marketing messages either to improve or increase this metric. At the end of the day, a business' main goal is to attract customers and retain them. Analysis of visits to your page is fundamental to achieving this. 

Until next time, I'll leave you with this HubSpot blog that shares insights into this metric: https://tinyurl.com/57z32bns