Key highlights
- Track website hits per day with Bluehost Analytics and Google Analytics.
- Measure key web analytics metrics like bounce rate, traffic sources and unique visitors.
- Analyze website statistics to understand user behavior and improve site performance.
- Compare traffic data, top pages and competitors rank for better marketing campaigns.
- Optimize audience insights using website traffic checkers and content analytics software.
To measure your website’s performance, go beyond counting sales. Look under the hood to see how people interact with your site through web analytics for beginners.
This approach is called web analytics and starts with collecting website statistics on your visitors. You can then analyze the data for ideas to improve your website’s user experience. The result is a super effective website that compels more customers, engagement and sales while giving you accurate traffic data and insights into site performance.
While you learn, don’t let any complex-sounding terms throw you off; with some straightforward steps and easy-to-use tools like Bluehost Analytics or Google Analytics, you’ll get a better idea of what your target market wants.
What is web analytics?
Web analytics is the process of tracking and analyzing what users do while they use your website. This data reveals what you can capitalize on and what to fix about your business. That’s valuable, so business owners install web analytics metrics applications that collect relevant website statistics and user behavior insights.
Without software programs, many web analytics tactics would be a big ask for most business owners. However, the right tools will give you a good grip on making website statistics analysis a routine; this guide will include recommendations of the best web analytics for beginners.
First, let’s consider what website statistics and analytics can do for your business and how Bluehost Analytics and other tools can simplify your journey.
Web analytics example
Imagine you’re trying to grow your blogging website. Using web analytics metrics, you could compare all your blog posts and discover the high-performing ones, based on a metric such as your visitors’ average time on each page. Now that you know what’s working, you can double down, try a new spin on it and attempt to improve the format even more with insights from traffic analysis and audience insights.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to web analytics nor a predetermined playbook for using the insights. To know what works best, practice your critical thinking, run tests to see for yourself, learn more about marketing campaigns and remain patient as you gather up to date data for better site performance.
Why tracking website metrics is important
Tracking web analytics metrics is the difference between guessing and growing strategically. By analyzing web site statistics, you can make data-driven decisions that directly impact your bottom line. For example, rather than just counting website hits per day, you can identify exactly where potential customers drop off, allowing you to fix performance issues before they hurt sales.
Beyond troubleshooting, these insights reveal what your audience truly values. Whether you are a blogger or a business owner, understanding website visitors statistics helps you measure the ROI of your marketing efforts. This ensures you invest time and budget in strategies that actually work, turning raw data into a roadmap for sustainable business growth.
What do website analytics allow you to do?
Website analytics reveals which types of viewers visit your website, where they found it and what they use it for. You can see which parts of your site are popular with customers and which parts could do better. And ultimately, you’ll gain more ideas for marketing campaigns and traffic analysis.
Let’s explore each aspect in depth to get a full picture of your website statistics and improve your site performance.
Get a better understanding of customer behavior
Do customers spend time reading your blog or do they navigate straight to your weekly deals page? Either way, gaining this traffic data will help you make changes to your website to make it more user-friendly. For example, you may decide to feature the popular page more prominently on your landing pages to boost user engagement and improve overall site performance.
Find out who’s visiting your website
User demographics, especially geographical location, will help with market segmentation — a strategy centered on categorizing your target market into groups that share characteristics and motivations.
Once you know who’s coming to your website, you can conduct a thorough website statistics analysis and send targeted ads, incentives or content straight to the people who’d be most interested. With tools like Google Analytics or Bluehost Analytics, you’ll get accurate audience insights into your site visitors and make more informed decisions about your marketing efforts.
See which parts of your website are popular with customers
After determining which parts of your website are a hit with customers, you can make those sections an area of focus to boost conversions.
If most people spend the bulk of their time on your product description pages, you could focus on closing the sale by adding a product comparison section, a time-sensitive deal or clearer links to the checkout page. Tracking engagement metrics and user journeys through tools like content analytics software helps you refine your marketing campaigns.
Learn which parts of your website could perform better
If you’ve spent a lot of time updating your blog section, you’ll want to know if your efforts have paid off web analytics metricswill answer that. On the other hand, you may realize a landing page needs an overhaul because most viewers hit the back button. Using traffic reports and bounce rate analysis, you can compare top pages with weaker ones and take action to improve site performance.
Identify where your website visitors came from
Web analytics reveals your traffic sources, including organic search from Google, Bing or Yahoo. Similarly, you can determine if you’re getting referral traffic, paid search or visitors from social media campaigns. This information tells you how much web traffic comes from each channel and whether your marketing efforts are paying dividends. By checking traffic numbers regularly with a website traffic checker, you can optimize marketing campaigns for both new users and returning ones.
Benefits of website traffic analysis
Conducting regular analysis of your web site statistics transforms raw numbers into actionable growth strategies for your small business. By understanding exactly how users interact with your pages, you can move beyond guesswork and make data-driven decisions that directly impact your bottom line. For instance, tracking specific web analytics metrics allows you to identify which blog posts or products engage your audience most effectively, ensuring you invest resources where they yield the highest return.
- Optimizing Content Strategy: Discover which topics resonate to replicate success and boost engagement.
- Refining Marketing Spend: Focus your budget on channels that actually drive website hits per day rather than wasting money on low-performing ads.
- Improving User Experience: Use website visitors statistics to spot high bounce rates and fix navigation or loading issues.
- Gaining Competitive Insight: Leverage analytics web traffic data to benchmark your performance against industry rivals and find new opportunities.
Key metrics for web analytics
Web analytics metrics are sometimes called key performance indicators (KPIs), but only some metrics will be relevant to your business goals. Keeping that in mind, here’s a list of commonly valuable measures of a website’s performance for website statistics analysis:
- Web traffic
- Page views
- Bounce rate
- Traffic sources
- Conversion tracking
- Time spent on site
- Unique visitors
- Returning visitors
- Cart abandonment
Tracking these engagement metrics helps you understand user behavior, optimize landing pages and get a full picture of how many visitors your site attracts and how they interact with it.
Web traffic
This is the number of users who visit your website in a given time period. It’s one of the most widely used web analytics metrics, but its impact varies. For example, if tons of people land on your site and only view one page, then the high traffic numbers are less valuable.
Conversely, if website visitors typically browse multiple pages, that points to higher user engagement you can capitalize on. Tools like Bluehost Analytics or a traffic checker make it easy to see how much traffic your website gets per day.
Page views
After checking out your website traffic, explore each page’s performance by reviewing its number of page views, also known as page impressions. If you plan on promoting a product or discount on an individual webpage, remember to look at the website statistics beforehand and then compare the traffic reports afterward. This data helps you make informed decisions for your marketing campaigns.
Bounce rate
This is the proportion of site visitors who leave your website without engaging further (e.g., navigating to another part of your site). A high bounce rate could mean your site is slow, so visitors grow impatient and leave or that your page is not relevant to search intent.
According to Semrush, a good bounce rate is 40% or below. However, benchmarks vary. For example, blogs generally have higher rates, while online store websites tend to perform better. Using engagement metrics such as scroll depth and file downloads can help you understand why users exit early.
If you find out your web pages have a high bounce rate, it’s crucial to use all the tools at your disposal to align it with industry standards.
Traffic sources
Traffic volume is useful, but knowing where your site visitors come from is equally important. Examples of traffic sources include:
- Organic traffic from a search engine like Google or Bing
- Visitors from paid search ads
- Referral traffic from another website or brand
- Social media traffic
- Users arriving via email marketing campaigns
Tracking these channels provides a full picture of how people discover your site. With up to date data, you’ll know whether to scale SEO, focus on paid social or invest in new marketing efforts.
Traffic by source breakdown
Understanding where your visitors originate is crucial for optimizing your marketing strategy. Most web site statistics break traffic down into key categories: organic search, direct traffic, referrals, social media, and paid campaigns. For established websites, organic search typically drives over 50% of website hits per day, while direct traffic often accounts for around 20%, signaling strong brand loyalty. Referrals and social media generally contribute smaller percentages but frequently yield highly engaged users.
To leverage these website visitors statistics, review your data in Bluehost Analytics or Google Analytics to identify your highest-performing channels. If your analytics web traffic reveals that paid ads drive more conversions than social media, you should shift your budget accordingly. Prioritizing the sources that deliver quality traffic—rather than just volume—is the most effective way to use web analytics metrics for sustainable business growth.
Conversion rate
This rate represents the percentage of total website visitors who act in a desired manner (e.g., making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter or sharing content). While a visually appealing site is important, it should also drive actions that grow your business.
According to Statista, B2C eCommerce websites had an average conversion rate of only 2% in early 2023. You can expect similar numbers and use conversion tracking tools like Google Analytics or Bluehost Analytics to monitor performance. These insights help align your marketing campaigns with real sales results.
Time spent on site
Short visits to your website may suggest you aren’t doing enough to keep users engaged. Instead of focusing on every brief visit, look at the average site performance and time users spend on each page. Match this data with page purpose — whether it’s to read content, sign up or purchase.
By analyzing engagement metrics such as scroll depth, you’ll gain audience insights into how users interact with your landing pages, helping you improve user journeys and marketing efforts.
Number of unique visitors
This total ignores several visits by the same individual, so it’s a good indicator of the potential new customers you’ve reached in a given period. Google uses cookies to identify these unique visitors and give you data on them.
A rise in your number of unique visitors would confirm that your latest digital marketing campaign has brought new customers to your website. Alternatively, timely events may have people searching for what you offer.
However, this measure is not impeccably accurate. Suppose a website visitor uses multiple devices to browse your website (e.g., their phone in the morning, desktop at lunch and tablet in the evening). In that case, each device will register as a unique visit.
Also, if your visitors are particularly vigilant in removing cookies, you might occasionally get a miscount of unique visitors. All in all, use this metric as a ballpark estimate.
New visitor sessions
New visitor sessions specifically track individuals arriving at your website for the first time, distinguishing them from returning users who have visited before. Unlike total unique visitors, which counts every distinct person regardless of their history, this metric isolates fresh traffic. Analyzing these web site statistics is essential for measuring the effectiveness of acquisition campaigns and brand awareness efforts.
For content-heavy sites, a healthy benchmark often hovers around 60% to 70% new visitors, whereas e-commerce businesses may aim for a more balanced ratio to verify customer retention. You can easily find these web analytics metrics in the Audience overview of Google Analytics or within Bluehost Analytics to monitor your analytics web traffic and adjust strategies accordingly.
Returning visitors
A return visit can indicate a loyal customer or a previous visitor’s desire to complete their purchase. Tracking returning visitors in your website statistics analysis highlights customer loyalty and helps refine marketing campaigns.
Don’t forget — it’s easier to keep site visitors coming back than to attract new users. According to Dotdigital, the average conversion rate for loyal customers is 60% to 70%, compared to only 5% to 20% for new customers. Monitoring this through Bluehost Analytics or other tools gives you actionable audience insights to strengthen user engagement and boost sales.
Cart abandonment
This is when customers add products to their basket but later decide against a purchase. In one study, the Baymard Institute found the average cart abandonment rate is 70.19%.
If your cart abandonment rate is higher, it could mean that customers have technical problems with your website or feel your total prices need to be lowered.
Another issue could be a lack of trust in how your brand would handle customer data. Many users will look at your URL to ensure you have an SSL certificate, so make sure you do. With Bluehost plans, you’ll automatically get a free SSL certificate along with website statistics through Bluehost Analytics to help you track user behavior and improve checkout conversion tracking.
What are website engagement metrics?
Website engagement metrics measure how visitors interact with your content beyond simple visits. While traffic metrics like website hits per day track the volume of people arriving at your site, engagement metrics reveal the quality of their experience. Think of it like a physical store: traffic counts who walks in the door, while engagement tracks who browses, asks questions, or tries on items. Relying solely on analytics web traffic numbers without looking at engagement gives you an incomplete picture of your website’s success.
Key web analytics metrics for engagement include time on page, pages per session, scroll depth, and return visits. For instance, a high number of pages per session suggests users are exploring your site deeply, while longer time on page indicates they are reading your content thoroughly. Specific interactions, such as clicking a “Buy Now” button or downloading a guide, provide concrete evidence of value. Unlike basic website visitors statistics, these indicators tell you if your content actually resonates with your audience.
Monitoring these web site statistics is crucial for assessing content quality and user satisfaction. High traffic combined with low engagement often signals that your content isn’t matching what visitors are looking for, leading to missed opportunities. By analyzing these behaviors, you can identify which pages are performing well and which need optimization, helping you make data-driven decisions to keep your audience interested and coming back.
Top pages on your site
Identifying the top-performing pages on your website is crucial for understanding what resonates with your audience. By reviewing your web analytics metrics, you can pinpoint which articles or landing pages generate the highest engagement, conversions, and website hits per day. This data reveals valuable patterns—whether your visitors prefer long-form tutorials, product reviews, or quick tips—allowing you to refine your content strategy.
Once you identify these high-traffic hubs, leverage them to boost the rest of your site. Place strategic internal links on these popular pages to guide users toward newer content or underperforming products. You should also analyze the structure and topic of these winners to replicate their success in future posts. Most tools, including Bluehost Analytics and Google Analytics, provide dedicated “Top Pages” reports to help you track these essential web site statistics effectively.
Actions per visit
Actions per visit, also known as events per session, is one of the most vital web analytics metrics for measuring user interactions during a single visit. Unlike simple page views, this tracks specific behaviors like clicks, file downloads, video plays, and form submissions. These website visitors statistics provide a clearer picture of engagement quality, distinguishing active users from passive browsers.
While benchmarks vary by industry, seeing 2 to 3 actions per session generally indicates healthy engagement. To improve these web site statistics, focus on intuitive user experience design and clear calls to action that encourage participation. You can easily monitor this data using Bluehost Analytics or Google Analytics, allowing you to go beyond tracking basic website hits per day to understanding the true value of your analytics web traffic.
How to make website analytics work for your website
When it’s your first time using web analytics for beginners, it’s easy to get overwhelmed as you look into the plethora of tools and KPIs.
Here are some steps to help beginners nail website statistics analysis:
- Make a plan and write down your goals for using web analytics metrics. For instance, do you want to increase your website traffic by using search engine optimization or are you looking to change your marketing campaigns to boost user engagement?
- Schedule a predictable, recurring time to check your website statistics. This could mean a weekly check-in with different team members or a monthly traffic analysis project
- Schedule a predictable, recurring time to check your website’s analytics. This could mean a weekly check-in with different team members or a monthly data collection and analysis project.
- Start small to avoid information overload. A data-driven approach is only helpful if you can wisely use the stats you get. Once you gain basic analytics know-how, you can move on to the tricker measures.
- After you uncover an insight, act on it. Website statistics analysis will give you clues about improving your site’s functionality. In line with those clues, proactively update your pages, including adding new content and altering visual elements.
- Stay patient until you see results. You may need to change your approach several times before you settle on one that works. Document your process at each stage to make web analytics metrics easier for you and your team members..
- Holistically consider multiple metrics. While it’s impractical to do everything at once, use various tools and measures to ensure you get a broad picture of user interactions. With the increased context, you’ll be even more sure you’re focusing on the right things.
If you’re looking to try your hand at web analytics but aren’t sure where to start, then read on. We’ll go over the most popular content analytics software and explain the features that’ll help you the most.
How to analyze website traffic effectively
Analyzing your website traffic effectively requires moving beyond simple observation to asking the right questions about your data. Follow this step-by-step process to transform raw numbers into actionable growth strategies.
- Verify Your Setup: Before trusting your data, ensure your tracking tools are collecting accurate web site statistics. Whether using Bluehost Analytics or Google Analytics, check that your tracking code is active on all pages to prevent data gaps.
- Identify Trends and Compare Periods: Context is key. Review your website hits per day over the last 30 days and compare this period with the previous month or year. This helps distinguish between actual growth and seasonal fluctuations.
- Segment Your Data: Aggregate numbers can hide critical details. Break down your analytics web traffic by source, device type and demographics. You might find that while desktop traffic converts well, mobile users have higher bounce rates, indicating a need for design optimization.
- Spot Anomalies and Patterns: Look for unusual spikes or drops in your website visitors statistics. A sudden dip might reveal technical errors, while a spike indicates content that resonated with your audience.
- Draw Actionable Insights: Turn your findings into tasks. If a specific blog post drives high engagement, plan similar content. If a landing page underperforms on specific devices, prioritize technical fixes.
By consistently reviewing these key web analytics metrics, you can stop guessing what works and start making data-driven decisions that directly improve your website’s performance.
Best web analytics tools for beginners
If you run a quick Google search, you’ll see many web analytics tools, some of which are better suited to experts and the world’s leading brands with million-dollar budgets. Finding tools for web analytics for beginners can be hard.
For your convenience, the best website statistics apps to consider are:
- Google Analytics
- Crazy Egg
- Hotjar
- Bluehost Analytics
- Similarweb
- Semrush
Google Analytics
According to Statista research, this tool had a website statistics market share of 29.62% in 2022. Every website owner should try Google Analytics and its academy is a great jumping-off point for those just starting with web analytics for beginners.
Once you’re ready to dive in and use this platform, look forward to a real-time snapshot of how your website traffic is performing. For example, you can uncover traffic data like page views, number of new users, total revenue, retention and cart abandonment. This helps you make informed decisions about your marketing campaigns and improve overall site performance.
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg has various tools of a more analytical nature, such as heatmaps, A/B testing and error tracking. Since you can dive deeper than face-value data, it’s used by the world’s leading brands such as Dell and Etsy.
Crazy Egg records entire viewer sessions, allowing you to track user behavior, including a user’s mouse movements as they consider your subscribe button. These insights help improve user engagement and refine marketing campaigns.
In terms of pricing, Crazy Egg is a paid service, but if you’d like a test drive before you buy, take advantage of the free 30-day trial. A basic Crazy Egg plan includes 30,000 tracked page views, unlimited surveys, websites and A/B tests — plenty of website statistics to fuel your analysis.
Hotjar
One useful feature of Hotjar is that it integrates with Slack, HubSpot, Google Analytics and more. Instead of simply spitting out stats, it helps website owners understand the reasons behind performance issues through user behavior and website statistics analysis.
Like Crazy Egg, Hotjar provides useful features like heatmaps, recordings and surveys. One key difference is that Hotjar’s basic plan is free forever, which is great for those just starting with web analytics for beginners. However, for more than 35 tracked sessions per month, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan. With traffic data and audience insights from Hotjar, you can better understand site visitors and improve user engagement.
Bluehost
Choose Bluehost as your web hosting provider to get built-in Bluehost Analytics powered by Awstats and Webalizer straight from your website dashboard.
With the utmost convenience, you can generate traffic reports on key web site statistics such as unique visitors, number of visits, page views, website hits per day and bandwidth.
These website statistics give you a full picture of your site performance and help you make more informed decisions about your marketing efforts. Plus, it comes at no added cost, making it a beginner-friendly choice for web analytics metrics.
Free website analytics options
You do not need a massive budget to effectively track web site statistics. For Bluehost users, Bluehost Analytics comes included with your hosting plan, offering a beginner-friendly dashboard to track website hits per day and website visitors statistics immediately. Google Analytics 4 is another robust, free-forever option, though it often has a steeper learning curve than built-in solutions. While paid tools provide advanced features like session recordings, these free options let you master essential web analytics metrics and optimize analytics web traffic before needing to upgrade.
| Feature | Free Options (Bluehost, GA4) | Paid Upgrades (Crazy Egg, Hotjar) |
|---|---|---|
| Setup Difficulty | Easy (Built-in) to Moderate | Moderate to Complex |
| Key Data | Traffic volume, traffic sources | Heatmaps, A/B testing |
| Best For | General site performance | Deep user behavior analysis |
Similarweb
This analytics giant has paid and free tools. On the Similarweb site, enter any URL into the analytics search bar to find out its category rank, total visits, bounce rate, number of pages per visit and average visit duration.
Similarweb can be connected to Google Analytics or the Google Search Console to provide even more traffic data and website statistics on your site visitors.
With these insights, you can compare competitors, check competitors rank and use traffic analysis to identify trends that shape your marketing campaigns in the digital world.
Semrush
Semrush has a whole suite of tools for gleaning useful website data. While it’s famed for SEO, the platform also has a useful analytics reporting feature.
With Semrush, you can find your website’s average visit duration, traffic sources, traffic share by device, unique visitors, bounce rate and number of pages per visit. Currently, you can generate 10 free traffic reports per day if you register with Semrush.
Using website traffic checkers for competitive analysis
Website traffic checkers aren’t just for your own site; they are powerful tools for analyzing the competition. By using platforms like Similarweb, Semrush and Ahrefs, you can access web site statistics for rival brands to benchmark your performance. These tools provide estimated data on their analytics web traffic, revealing valuable insights such as their top-performing pages, primary traffic sources and the specific keywords driving their search rankings.
To conduct effective analysis, start by identifying direct competitors and inputting their domains into your chosen tool. Compare their website visitors statistics against yours to identify specific gaps in your strategy. Look for high-traffic pages you haven’t covered or sources where they excel. This process helps you uncover opportunities to capture more website hits per day that you might otherwise miss.
Remember that third-party tools provide estimates based on data sampling rather than exact figures. Use these web analytics metrics to spot directional trends rather than treating them as absolute facts. Ethically, this data should inform your own content strategy rather than serving as a blueprint for copying competitors. By interpreting these insights correctly, you can refine your marketing roadmap to outpace the competition.
How website traffic analysis tools work
Think of a web analytics tool as a highly observant store manager who quietly takes notes on every customer who walks through the door. This digital observation starts the moment you install a tracking code—usually a small snippet of JavaScript—onto your site’s pages. When a user lands on your website, this code executes immediately, collecting data about their device, location, and behavior, effectively monitoring your analytics web traffic in real-time.
To distinguish between a brand-new visitor and a loyal fan returning for the third time, these tools typically rely on cookies. A cookie is a small text file saved on the visitor’s browser that acts like a temporary ID card. This method is known as client-side tracking because it happens on the user’s device. It is crucial for calculating complex web analytics metrics such as how long someone stays on a page or which buttons they click.
In contrast, server-side tracking records activity directly on the web server whenever a browser requests a file. While this method captures website hits per day reliably without relying on browser scripts, it often lacks the rich behavioral detail that client-side tracking provides. Most modern dashboards combine these methods or rely heavily on client-side data to visualize your web site statistics into easy-to-read graphs.
It is important to understand that website visitors statistics are rarely 100% perfect. Ad blockers, privacy browsers, and users who decline cookie consent can prevent tracking codes from firing, potentially leading to underreported numbers. Despite this, modern analytics platforms are designed to handle data responsibly, anonymizing personal details to comply with privacy laws while still providing the trends you need to grow.
Final thoughts
As you’re finding your groove with website analytics, you’ll realize the quickest way to improve your target audience experience is to ensure your web host provides lightning-fast load speeds and keeps up with your growing website traffic.
But why should your web host stop there? Bluehost offers digital marketing services that take an active role in boosting your SEO and advertising.
You’ll meet with marketing experts to discuss your business goals, they’ll review traffic data like top pages, new users and historical data in search console and create marketing campaigns to match.
With benchmark performance insights and a clear view of competitors rank, you get to watch your organic traffic grow while your web analytics metrics improve.
FAQs
To start web analytics for beginners, install a tool like Google Analytics or Bluehost Analytics. These tools help you track website statistics, including website hits per day, traffic data and user behavior. With these insights, you’ll make more informed decisions about your marketing campaigns and improve site performance.
The five steps of web analytics metrics are:
1. Define goals for your website and target audience.
2. Collect traffic data with analytics tools.
3. Measure key metrics like unique visitors, traffic sources and conversion tracking.
4. Analyze website statistics such as bounce rate, engagement metrics and top pages.
5. Act on insights to optimize site performance and marketing efforts.
You can see website statistics with Google Analytics, Bluehost Analytics or a website traffic checker. These tools display website hits per day, traffic reports organic traffic, site visitors and new users. With just a few clicks, you can view historical data and benchmark performance to improve marketing campaigns.
Website statistics analysis of individual pages shows traffic numbers, top pages, bounce rate and user engagement. By tracking website visitors, scroll depth and file downloads, you get a full picture of site performance. Using content analytics software and search console, you can compare competitors rank and improve seo strategies.
The best website traffic checker depends on your needs. Bluehost Analytics is great for beginners, while Google Analytics provides in-depth traffic analysis. Similarweb and Semrush offer competitive traffic reports and benchmark performance against competitors.
