17 Tips How To Check Website Traffic

All online store or e-commerce website owners want their web resources to have a high conversion rate. Nevertheless, not many spend time checking and analyzing their website traffic statistics.

How do I check website traffic? Learn how to do so, compare traffic between sites, check site popularity, and more.

This article will help you understand how to view and estimate the traffic to your website and your competitors’ pages.

Key Tools and Metrics for Checking Website Traffic

Monitoring your website traffic is essential for understanding your audience and improving your online presence. There are various tools and metrics to consider when evaluating website traffic. This guide provides key criteria and tools for checking website traffic effectively.

Criteria	Importance Level	Example Indicators
Google Analytics	High	Comprehensive traffic data, user behavior, real-time stats
Unique Visitors	High	Number of distinct users visiting your site
Page Views	High	Total number of pages viewed
Traffic Sources	High	Breakdown of traffic origins (organic, direct, referral, social)
Average Session Duration	Medium	The average time users spend on your site
Bounce Rate	Medium	Percentage of visitors who leave after viewing one page
Conversion Rate	High	Percentage of visitors completing desired actions (e.g., purchases)
Mobile vs. Desktop Traffic	Medium	Comparison of traffic from mobile devices and desktop computers
Heatmaps	Medium	Visual representation of user interactions on your site
SEO Performance	High	Organic search rankings, keyword performance

Regularly checking website traffic using tools like Google Analytics and focusing on key metrics such as unique visitors, traffic sources, and conversion rates is crucial for optimizing your site. Understanding these metrics helps you make informed decisions to enhance user experience and achieve your business goals.

1. Content positioning errors

Using website traffic statistics, you can get information about:

Total number of website visitors
All actions visitors complete on the website
Your website performance
Results of website optimization and promotion

Correct estimation and analysis of such data will help you find problems in your promotion strategy and make it more effective. Regardless of the web resource type—an online store or a simple landing page—you must continuously analyze its traffic.

2. Why Do I Need To Analyze Website Traffic Statistics

Whether you analyze website traffic free of charge or use paid tools to check website traffic, you obtain valuable information for website optimization.

Website traffic analysis and domain traffic check can answer the following questions:

What percentage of the target audience visits your site (out of the total traffic)? A website popularity check is essential to measuring the share of potential leads that convert. You can see if your marketing efforts pay off by checking the website visitor count and monitoring it over time.
What traffic source generates the highest number of target visitors and conversions? If you wonder “how to check my website traffic,” analyze different traffic channels. This way, you will know what channels to focus on.
How much time do users spend on the site, and how many pages do they view? This website traffic information helps evaluate the quality of traffic and user behavior on your website.
What should we do next (and what should we fix) to achieve the set goals?

Once you analyze traffic statistics, you’ll better understand your visitors and their behavioral patterns.

3. Key Indicators Of Website Traffic Statistics

Website traffic is measured using the following leading indicators:

Sessions. The number of website visits for a selected period. One session is one visit to the website completed by any user. The session is over if the user leaves the website or remains inactive for around 30 minutes. Therefore, the more sessions you have, the more effective your promotion strategy is.
Pages/Session. This indicator reflects a website’s visit depth. You can learn how many pages users view during one session. A large number of pages means your web resource is interesting, useful, and convenient.
Average Session Duration. The duration of one session is calculated as the average number. The longer users stay on your website, the better its search ranking will be.
Users. The number of unique users that have visited the website for a selected period. Don’t confuse the number of sessions and the number of users. Sessions show how many times all users have browsed your website. As a result, the number
Bounce rate: The percentage of users who leave the website within less than 15 seconds of visiting it. High bounce rates show that the web resource doesn’t satisfy visitors’ needs, and they landed there accidentally.
Channels. These are the sources of user traffic. Nine types of such channels will be described in detail below.
Devices. The metrics that segment users by device type (PC, tablet, smartphone).
Average position. The indicator reflects the position of the website in search results.
CTR: The ratio of impressions to the number of clicks on your page in search results. The higher your CTR, the more effective your website promotion strategy will be.
Clicks. This data shows how visitors interact with different elements on your website pages. Analyze the page clicks to see which features are ignored and fix them to improve your website usability.
Scrollmap. This information allows you to analyze the scroll depth on your website. Thus, you can ensure that the most important information is noticeable.

It’s not an extensive list of all indicators that measure user traffic. However, you can select and track additional metrics after analyzing a website.

4. Website Traffic-Check Free vs. Premium Website Views Checkers

Now that you know how to see a website’s traffic and where to check website traffic, it’s time to pick a tool. The choice between a free or paid option is critical.

Free solutions check a site’s traffic with limitations. They check website stats online and record the main interactions, like the number of website viewers or channels. Such software is suitable for quick research or understanding how to see a website’s traffic with a tool before buying its more advanced subscription.

Paid solutions support broader functionality, including competitive website traffic analysis, detailed data on website visitors, customer behavior, etc. They also provide reports after measuring site traffic and checking website hits. You should use them for thorough analysis and optimization.

5. Tools To Check And Analyze Website Traffic Statistics

How do you check website traffic and traffic on a competitor’s website? To analyze the mentioned website traffic indicators, we will use the following services:

Google Analytics is a must-have for any web resource. This free service has almost everything you need to promote and optimize a website. If you haven’t installed it yet, here is a link to a manual from the Google Analytics team.
Yandex.Metrica is another handy analytics tool. This analog of Google Analytics collects and analyzes data from the Yandex Search engine. Yet, since Google Search is much more popular, we will analyze traffic using Google Analytics in this article.
Search Console is a free service provided by Google that allows you to analyze website SEO and performance. Follow this link for a detailed installation manual.
Plerdy is a platform that helps to improve website UX and grow conversions. It includes tools like a click heatmap, PopUp forms, and SEO alerts. With over 80 features and capabilities for online marketers, the Plerdy script takes less than 30 seconds to install. Follow the link to learn how to install Plerdy.

Let’s review each indicator based on the example of an online travel equipment store. We have selected the period from April 1 to April 30 for a more detailed and in-depth analysis. Therefore, all the provided data is related to this period.

6. Analysis of Website Traffic Indicators: Sessions, Users, Pages/Session, Avg. Session Duration, Bounce Rate

To check these indicators, sign in to your Google Analytics account and click Audience > Overview.

Here are Sessions, Users, Pages/Session, Avg. Session Duration and Bounce Rate for our online store in April.

Based on the April data from the screenshot, we can learn that:

The website is widespread, with 148,933 user sessions per month.
The number of sessions exceeds the number of users by 20%. This means that 20% of users may have visited the online store twice (or more).
The average number of pages per session is 1.29. Therefore, we can assume that users proceed to the payment page after visiting a product page.
The bounce rate for this type of online store is relatively high (82.52%). However, only 17.48% of visitors stay on the website for over 15 seconds.
Session duration is also tiny – only 1 minute 11 seconds.

This information is already enough to draw the following conclusions:

The SEO strategy developed for website promotion is successful since 20% of users return to view the content
The key problem is that users usually leave the resource very quickly. This may mean its semantic kernel isn’t properly distributed among the pages.

Let’s move on. The following website traffic indicator we’ll analyze is the types of traffic channels.

7. Website Traffic Indicator: Channels

To analyze all traffic channels, open Google Analytics and go to the Acquisition section > All Traffic > Channels.
Here is the breakdown of traffic channels for the analyzed website.
This store gets traffic from eight sources:

Organic. Search results.
Direct. Purposeful and direct visits to the website.
Referrals. Transitions to the website through the links to third-party resources.
Paid Search. Transitions through ads in Google.
Social. Transitions through social media.
Email. Transitions through corporate email newsletters.
Display. Transitions through banner ads configured in Google Ads.
Other. Traffic that Google Analytics could not recognize.

As you can see, our online store receives the leading share of visitors from search results. It means that its owners have taken care of its search engine optimization.

This screenshot includes other indicators for every mail traffic source and the list of mail traffic sources. Thus, you can compare and analyze these rates to understand which traffic source is the most effective and which channel you may ignore.

In this case, the organic search yields the best results, whereas email is unproductive.

8. Website Traffic Indicator: Devices

This indicator is critical for quality website traffic analysis. You must know what devices your visitors use to make the resource convenient and straightforward.

Here are the statistics by device type for the online store of travel equipment:

The majority of visitors browse the online store on mobile devices. Therefore, if your website isn’t optimized for smartphones, you lose an impressive number of users.

9. Website Statistics Analysis: Average Position

Such analysis is necessary if you perform or plan to perform search engine optimization of your website. This type of data reflects the actual ranking in search engines.

To view the website position for keywords, go to Google Search Console > Performance tab.

In April, the average position of the analyzed online store was 27.7.

This isn’t the best search ranking. Nevertheless, don’t get depressed. This indicator is just an average rate for all keywords on all website pages. Since you can never be at the top for all search requests, checking your ranking by page is better. Such numbers will reflect the actual situation on your website.

To view statistics for a separate page, click + NEW > Page:

10. Website Statistics Analysis: CTR

CTR (Click-through rate) is an important indicator of website performance. You should analyze it for the entire website and every page or category.

Our online travel equipment store had an average of 4% CTR during the analyzed period.
There is no fixed or ideal value for a CTR. You must regularly take measures to increase it. To achieve a better result, try improving the Titles and Descriptions of pages and continuously expanding your semantic kernel.

11. Website Statistics Analysis: Clicks

For this analysis, you should use an analytics tool offered by Plerdy. It’s easy to install and provides valuable information on website performance. For example, to find out how many clicks users make on website elements, complete the following steps:

Go to your account UX Analysis > Heatmaps.
Select the desired month or today in the calendar.
Next, follow the link in the table below in this report.
The page will show the number of clicks on every element.

This information lets you understand what to improve and which elements to eliminate.

12. Website Statistics Analysis: Scrollmap

Apart from clique analysis, Plerdy also records the scrolling patterns on your website.
To analyze the scroll depth of pages, you have to take the following steps:

1. First, go to the page you want to analyze.
2. Press Ctrl + Alt + H to open the Plerdy dashboard.
3. Select the period you plan to analyze and turn on the scroll map.

You will see a percentage of users who have scrolled to a certain point on the page, divided into several sections to show the scroll depth.

This allows you to optimize the length of website pages and add information in the most eye-catching places.

13. Statistic Comparison With The Previous Period

Remember that website performance indicators continuously change and depend on various factors. Therefore, to get a clearer picture, conduct a before-and-after comparison.

You must use Google Analytics and the following settings to perform such an analysis.

Select dates and compare them with the previous period. Note that the chosen two months must have equal days and start/end on the same day. For our analysis, we selected 30 days. Thus, the first day is Monday, and the last is Tuesday.

The analysis shows the following results:

The screenshot clearly shows that the measures taken in April weren’t practical and even counterproductive. Nevertheless, you can rely on such data to adjust or change your website development strategy.

You should also know your competitors to improve your current approach to website promotion or implement a new one. Therefore, remember to monitor and analyze their traffic regularly.

14. Competitor Traffic Analysis

Conduct a detailed analysis of their traffic statistics to see how competitors run their businesses online and what methods they use.

Plan for collecting information about competitor websites:

Find your key online competitors.
Select from 3 to 6 main competitors.
Analyze the website traffic of every competitor.

15. Find Your Key Online Competitors

You most likely mislead yourself if you can already answer this question. Your offline competitors aren’t always the ones you compete with online.

How do you understand who you are competing with on the web? First, go to Google and search keywords for your business individually. This will give you a general picture of the websites that comprise your business niche.

Still, this approach is quite time- and effort-consuming. Therefore, you can try special online services that can fully automate the search and analysis of competitors, such as Serpstat

16. Select From 3 To 6 Main Competitors

Choose several relevant competitors. It’s not recommended to include too many web resources in the analysis. Each competitor may use a different approach and still get top results. If you are a newbie, the more competitors you analyze, the more likely you will get confused and choose the wrong method.

17. Analyze the Website Traffic Of Every Competitor

There are several ways to collect and analyze the data on competitor traffic:

Website Ads page. Such pages are often available on mass media websites. Nevertheless, other resources sometimes publish their statistics. Yet, you should remember that such information may be outdated or inaccurate.
Request the statistics directly from a website owner. You can address the company and ask them about a report on its website traffic. This method may be effective if you contact a news website or want to become a partner or sponsor.
Use services. We will discuss this approach in more detail.

To check and analyze website traffic statistics of your competitors, use the following services:

Serpstat
SimilarWeb
Ahrefs

Serpstat is a multifunctional service that allows you to learn more about your competitors. It’s an excellent solution for in-depth analysis. For example, with Serpstat, you can view which keywords another website uses for promotion, check its ranking, contextual ads, etc.

SimilarWeb is an online service that analyzes any website’s statistics. You only have to take several steps:

Open SimilarWeb.
Enter the URL of a competitor in the corresponding field.
Analyze the results.

Apart from the total traffic of the analyzed website, this service also shows the traffic sources.
You have to consider that the information in this service isn’t 100% accurate. Usually, the provided
numbers exceed the real rates by 2-3 times.

Ahrefs is an online tool that can help you learn more about your competitors’ link-building (the process of increasing link mass) and content strategy.

Perceive this data as a foundation that will help you develop an action plan for the future.

Conclusion

Proper estimation and analysis of website traffic will help to find problems in your website promotion strategy and performance. After you fix them, the resources will work more effectively.
Website traffic analysis allows you to determine the percentage of your target audience that visits your site, the most effective traffic source, session duration, and the number of pages viewed per session.
You will need Google Analytics and Search Console to analyze your website traffic.
Compare the current results with the previous period of equal duration.
To check and analyze the statistics on competitor websites, use Serpstat, SimilarWeb, and Ahrefs.
Continue reading our blog and use these handy tips for your business!