Track This: The number of visitors who interact with your business, and the experiential paths they take.

Traffic, or the number of visitors who interact with your business or endeavor is incredibly important to measure. Whether you have a website or a brick and mortar store, measuring traffic helps you:

• Identify how many people are visiting and getting to know you
• Figure out details about those visitors including who they are, their tastes and preferences and how they found out about you
• Calculate your rate of conversion; the percentage of people who buy versus browse
• Uncover where people leave,  the possibilities as to where they disconnect and indications as to why they left
• Identify opportunities to increase your connection, resonance, conversion rates and revenue

Common Traffic Tools

• Google Analytics – Can track not only the number of visitors but where they are coming from, how they heard about you, what time of day they visit, how they navigate your website, how deeply they browse, where they go, what they click, and the last page they visit before leaving. This information makes it easy to identify holes like boring content/weak calls to action, poor organization/presentation and so on. WordPress users, here’s a great plugin for simple Google Analytics Integration.
• Customer Surveys – can provide meaningful insights about those who visit.
• Email Forms / Newsletter Sign Ups – The various forms that visitors fill out make it easier to determine visitor information, and help you measure the ease and usability as well.
• Conversations regarding the place they visited – Often, the most underlooked tool is the face to face conversations with local visitors. These can produce many great insights to help you make your place better, be it on or offline. If your operation is small, these qualitative efforts can be more valuable than numbers alone.

Uncommon Traffic Tools

• Hello Bar – That floating bar that asks a question and provides a link, allows me to collect data on which messages resonate with visitors and what gets clicked on. This data allows me to craft better messages to more effectively convey the value of what I’m asking them to check out. Hello Bar
• Heat Maps – Heat maps track what/how people mouse around and click things on a website. This makes it easier for you to determine visually how people are browsing and what they are looking. WordPress user tip: There are many plugins to help you here. Check this one out.

Get started with analytics or stats for your site. Ask yourself what the numbers might be telling you and what tweaks you ought to consider making to increase your conversions.