“How many people are coming to our web site?” This is probably one of the most commonly asked questions of your analytics.  Visitors and visits are a great raw indicator of performance, but taken on their own they only tell half the story. Attracting visitors is only one part of web site success. If the visitors aren’t converting to customers, partners, or prospects, for example, you are filling a leaky bucket.

Visits and visitors are the foundation of all other metrics. Let’s look at 2 visit-based ratios that produce some more useful key performance indicators.

Average pageviews This is the number of pages viewed per visit. Unless you are a site focused solely on support, this should grow. You want people to see more of your site – be exposed to more of your content. It must be taken with a grain of salt. Taken on its own, a high page view could mean your site is confusing and unintuitive and people are getting lost, clicking aimlessly.  As well, with increased use of technologies such as AJAX, URLs don’t change so the concept of a page is questioned, skewing the statistics.

Another stat that is often referenced with visitors is time spent on site. The length of the visit is measured in minutes from start to finish. The longer a visit the better – one could assume greater engagement. But this is also a flawed metric for a few reasons. If the user leaves your site by closing the browser or typing another URL in directly, the clock doesn’t know when to stop. So the length of their visit is only up to the end of their second last page.

This stat also doesn’t account for people’s focus, or lack thereof. Was the person instant messaging? Did they take a phone call or leave their desk? A web site visit doesn’t time out for 29 minutes that is plenty of time to grab a sandwich. A few of these incidents can really skew results.

Two great stats that a great together Average pageviews and time on site need to be taken together.

• Long time + low pages = disengaged
• Short time + high pages = lost
• Long time + high pages = engaged!

If both are trending up together, you can assume this is for the right reasons. They are looking at more pages and taking the time to read them. And they are more apt to turn into that other coveted metric: the return visitor.

A returning visitor is one who makes repeat visits to your web site. An increase in returning visitors means you are building loyalty and equity as they feel the content and services are providing value. These are the people who become stakeholders in your organization.

New visits are important as well. An increase in new visitors indicates that your marketing efforts/campaigns are being successful and you are reaching new markets. It’s easy to increase the number of visits and visitors by buying traffic.

But it’s building engagement and interest with fresh, quality, relevant content that will push up pageviews and time on site – and ultimately conversion.