To measure your businesses website success, you not only want to know how many visitors are on your page, but how they’re engaging with your site, where they’re coming from and how long they stick around. These are the most important statistics you should be monitoring in 2022.

There are a range of metrics to watch on Google Analytics, and we’re here to share what we think are the top 5 most important ones. Read on!

1.Page views – How many people are viewing a certain page?

Page views is the total number of pages viewed on your website. It measures the number of times a page is seen by a user. It is counted when a page is loaded or re-loaded in a user’s browser.

The importance of this metric is that it allows you to know how many users are viewing certain pages on your website, this assists in knowing what the most viewed page and therefore most popular content you’re producing is.

2. Average time on page – How long are they on the one page for?

The longer your users are on a page, the better. Average time on a page refers to how long users are on a specific page on your website. This is a great indicator to know how engaging your content is.

Longer time spent on a page also suggests that the users are ones who value your content, which shows you’re targeting your intended audience.

It really depends on the content you’re producing for you to know if the time users are spending on your page is good. According to a survey by Databox, 45% of respondents said their average time on a page for their blog post is between 3-5 minutes.

3. Average session duration – How long overall are they staying on the website?

A session refers to a period of time a user is active on your website. If they leave your website and come back, it will count as two sessions.

An average session duration therefore measures how long users typically spend time on your entire website, rather than just a page-by-page analysis.

This metric is a great way to get a clearer idea of your audience’s engagement and gives you a deeper analysis of what they’re most attracted to on your website.

4. Acquisition – Where are they coming from?

One of the most important things website owners should want to know, is where their website users are coming from.

Although there are many different traffic sources of where your website users are coming from, a few common ones are:

• Organic – These are users that found your website most likely through a google search.
• Paid – These users arrive to your website by clicking a paid ad.
• Referrals – These users come to your website most likely from shared content on social media or from links on external websites.
• Email – These users arrive to your website from links embedded into your marketing emails.
• Direct – These users arrive to your website via a saved bookmark on a browser of by entering the websites URL directly into the search bar.

Paying attention to these traffic sources are a helpful indicator to know what to focus your marketing time or budget on. For example, if you find that your most valuable website leads have been from sharing articles on social media, then you know that you need to spend more time on posting them on your social media page.

5. Bounce rate – Are their interactions on the page?

Bounce rate refers to the percentage of users who load one page on your website and then leave without interacting on that page of visiting any others.

High bounce rates generally mean that your website is not performing to the best of its ability. A few examples of this happening could be due to website navigation being confusing or content not being relevant.

According to a survey by Top Design Firms, 42% of consumers said they will leave a website because of poor functionality.

A way to measure if you’re experiencing high bounce rates would be to go through a few individual pages throughout your website and compare them with one another to see what has a high and low bounce rate. From there you can assess what content is on each page and know what you can improve or remove.

These website metrics are simple ways to point out what is doing well on your website, and what’s doing not so well. Overall, this can assist in knowing what kind of content is more preferred on your website and what to focus on.