Website performance metrics

When looking at website analytics, such as Google or Matomo Analytics, there are tons of performance indicators.
Its sometimes just information overload. 

"Don't become too obsessed with data and metrics as they're often less than perfect."

by Shopify

All data is important, but a few key metrics stand out:

1. Number of Visitors
   This is the number of actual people that visited your webpage. This is the most important metric since, without visitors, your website is not being seen by anyone.
   
   
2. Bounce Rate
   This is how many visitors arrive at your website and then immediately leave (i.e. they bounce off the website).
   A high bounce rate means that your visitors aren't spending much time on your website, so either its not interesting or you are getting the wrong visitors (very important for when you are using pay-per-click advertising)
   
   
3. Session Duration
   How long do users spend on your website in total. A low session duration may mean that your site content isn't interesting enough to keep visitors engaged.
   
   
4. Average Pageviews per Session
   The number of pages visitors browse is a good indicator of how interesting your website is to visitors. The more pages a visitor sees on your website, the more likely they are to take the action you want, such as contacting you or enquiring about your products.
   
   
5. Average Time on Page
   Average time on page will let you know which kinds of pages visitors are spending more time on. This is very useful for websites that are content-heavy and depend upon visitors reading articles and watching videos.
   
   
6. Interactions per Visit
   The interactions per visit metric also lets you see the exact link, button, or other interactive elements a visitor has clicked and what action they took (i.e., liked, bought, commented, subscribed, etc.). It shows you exactly how visitors are moving across your website, giving you an idea of which parts of your website are engaging and which aren't.
   
   
7. Top Traffic Source
   There are places your website visitors come from. Wherever people are on the internet that drives them to your site is considered a traffic source, so you can see whats driving traffic to your website. For example, if your top traffic source is Facebook, then you know that is an effective source of visitors and something worthy spending time on. Conversely, if Facebook is generating very low traffic, maybe its just not worth spending any more time on.
   
   
8. Device Source
   The device source allows you to see what type of devices are being used to access your website. It helps with website design as you can see the screen size used, mobile devices vs desktops etc
   
   
9. Exit Pages
   Exit pages are the pages where people are leaving your website. Its useful to know because it gives you an idea of where to add more content or beef up your website.

Remember, the goal of metrics is to provide us with information we can use to improve our website return on investment.

If you focus on these metrics, they will help you understand exactly how your website is being used, the value it adds, what type of traffic you get and, most importantly, where to make improvements.