Website Traffic Data

What Is Website Traffic Data?

Website traffic data measures the number of a website’s visitors as well as where they came from, how they reached the site, and how long they stayed. All businesses with an online presence need to measure their site traffic in order to survive and grow.

Where Does Website Traffic Data Come From?

Businesses can find website traffic measurements through searching for a company’s “advertise with us” or “press kit” pages. These advertise the company’s site analytics for potential partners. However, even when the data exists, it may not be up to date. The best solution, then, is to use traffic analytics sites like Google, SimilarWeb, or Alexa. These sites provide real time and historical traffic data for any company; they also offer support to help companies make sense of all the information available.

What Types of Columns/Attributes Should I Expect When Working with This Data?

As noted above, the amount of website traffic data that users can work with is enormous. The most common attributes include visitor IP, device type (laptop vs mobile phone), when they reached the site, how long they stayed, and how they reached the site.

Of particular importance, of course, is how visitors reached a website. Measurements, then, include keyword search, links from social media, and links from other websites, emails, or ads.

Good analytics platforms also allow users to examine the data at any level of specificity they choose. For example, users can compare keywords used to reach a site within a certain time period, then measure how long visitors from certain countries stayed on the site after they arrived. Then they can divide the users by organic vs paid traffic.

What Is Website Traffic Data Used For?

Website traffic data tells businesses how well they perform in reaching out to their audience, how successful their ads have been, and how they should go on to target customers in the future. It also provides insight in new avenues for outreach: if a company discovers that a significant portion of their visitors come from a country they weren’t specifically targeting, they may adjust their marketing strategy to appeal more to that audience in the future.

Web traffic analytics can also help companies identify market trends and perform competitor analysis. Indeed, this type of analytics lends itself particularly well to identifying a company’s share of voice within a market.

How Should I Test the Quality of This Data?

Due to the potentially enormous amount of data, it is important that a data set be thoroughly cleansed before use. In particular, the data must be correctly matched as it is very easy to duplicate data in this category, especially if analytics use multiple data sources for each website—for example, measuring traffic from apps as well as emails.

Interesting Case Studies and Blogs to Look Into

Neil Patel: How to Check Website Traffic For Any Site
Think with Google: Watchfinder Clocks 1,300% ROI Using Precision Remarketing With Google Analytics

Tangible Examples of Impact

SimilarWeb counts big names such as Walmart Inc., Google LLC and Adidas AG as customers. The report that the startup is laying the groundwork for an IPO comes just months after it closed a $120 million funding round led by ION Crossover Partners and Viola Growth. SimilarWeb Chief Executive Officer Or Offer told TechCrunch at the time, in response to a question about the startup’s IPO roadmap, that ”we will pursue whatever we feel is necessary to grow.”

SiliconANGLE: Report: Web analytics startup SimilarWeb eyes IPO at $2B valuation