Stats Tutorial part 5 – Are your readers mobile? Where does your traffic come from?
For those of you just joining us, I’ve been writing a series on stats for the last few weeks. If you missed out, you can find the previous posts here:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
This week we have one more item to talk about on Google Analytics and then we’ll move on to Jetpack stats.
The last item on my list for Google Analytics is the type of device the readers are viewing the site on. Are they reading your site on a desk top computer or a mobile device like a tablet or a phone? The section that you want to look at is under Audience and then Mobile on your Google Analytics account. Have a peek at these numbers – they might surprise you. The news tells us that more and more people access the internet using a mobile device so Google strongly encourages us to have a mobile responsive website.
What’s a mobile responsive website? It’s one that will change so that it looks good and is readable on all screen sizes. In other words one that reorganizes itself, not just gets smaller. If you want to do a test – the website of my favorite coffee shop – Timmy’s is mobile responsive (http://timhortons.com) Look at the site on your desktop or laptop computer and then have a peek at it with your phone while you consider how your day could be made better with a cup of coffee….
I digress….
Frankly, I’ve had a lot of authors that I work with say – “I don’t have a tablet or a phone and I’m sure that my readers are only looking at my site on a desktop computer.” I then challenge them to look at their stats. Some are right but some are quite surprised by the percentage of their readers that view their site using a phone or tablet. Every audience is different, but just like where your audience is geographically located is important, how they are reading your information is also important.
Let’s move on to what you can learn from Jetpack stats found on WordPress. All of the information that we will talk about looking at on Jetpack stats can also be found on Google Analytics but I like the presentation on Jetpack better.
If you look at your full screen view of Jetpack stats it has 6 sections that we will look at. Three today and we’ll finish off next week. The most obvious section is the bar graph that fills the top area. This bar graph can be changed to see the numbers by the days, weeks or months. This section like the other sections we will talk about has a summary link in the upper right corner. I often find looking at the summaries of each of these areas is more helpful than looking at one day’s worth of stats – gives you a wider view.
Although it’s lovely to know how many people visited your blog each day, we want to look at the details of these visits to get information that we can act on.
Moving down and to the left, find the box that is labeled “Referrers.” This is where your traffic is coming from. In most cases, you will find where your reader clicked on something to lead them to you. I use this area to find people that have linked to me – as reader will click on those links and visit my site – and also to see what kind of traffic you are getting from your social media accounts. If you have never looked at this information before, you might be surprised by where your traffic is coming from. Just because you have a lot of retweets on Twitter doesn’t mean readers come to your blog. This section will help you to understand how effective your social media accounts are in drawing traffic to your blog.
The section below “Referrers” is “Search Engine Terms.” I don’t pay a lot of attention to this area but I am interested in determining what people are searching for when they find my sites. I’ll look at the results every couple of weeks. Honestly, I am often entertained by what words or phrases people use to find my sites. Look at your results and see if you can see some interesting search terms.
The box below “Search Engine Terms” is “Subscriptions.” This will tell you how many people use the WordPress subscription functionality to subscribe to your blog or to comments on your blog. To see who has subscribed to your blog in this fashion, just click on the link and you can see a list of names. One point to keep in mind is that people who subscribe to your blog generally don’t count as hits on your blog as they get your content emailed to them.
I think that’s enough information for today. I know that many people can get overwhelmed by numbers so I like to keep these posts short. Next week we’ll finish off talking about Jetpack stats. I look forward to your comments and questions.
* * *
I’d like to thank you for dropping by today! If you have a friend that would benefit from this post, please use the share buttons below to pass it on. I have created 25 or so videos to address sticky problems on blogs that I frequently get questions about. If you are interested in getting these videos or any of my posts delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for my Tech hints newsletter off to the right sidebar⇒
I’ve now re-worked and republished the four of my books. They were written in hopes of helping authors and bloggers. If they sound interesting, click on the covers and you will be taken to Amazon. For those of you who have been following along, The Book Blogger Platform was published a short time ago. In other news, I handed ‘Blogging for Authors’ in to my editor on Friday – hopefully that title will be out on Amazon as soon as possible!
Stay tuned for news.
The post Stats Tutorial part 5 – Are your readers mobile? Where does your traffic come from? appeared first on Bakerview Consulting.
