Top 3 In-house Web Traffic Analytics for Marketing in 2023

Hi there! As a website owner in 2023, you may be wondering: what are the top in-house web analytics I can use to boost my website traffic and marketing efforts?

Based on my experience as a data analyst and consultant, I would recommend focusing on these 3 highly effective tools:

1. Google Analytics – To track overall website traffic and engagement
2. Website Uptime Monitoring – To maximize website stability
3. Technical Audits with Lighthouse – To improve page speed and SEO.

These free or low-cost solutions will give you the website analytics capabilities of an expert without the high agency fees. In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll explain how each one works, the specific metrics to track, and how to use the data to drive growth and revenue.

Let‘s dive in!

#1 Google Analytics: Your Complete Traffic Insights Platform

Google Analytics remains the undisputed leader in free web analytics, used by over 50% of the top 1 million websites as of 2022.

(Source: W3Techs)

The platform gives you an incredible amount of data on your website visitors including:

• Number of users
• Visitor demographics like age, gender, location
• Traffic sources – direct, organic search, social etc.
• Keyword and referral tracking
• Page views, bounce rates, session durations
• Sales and conversion tracking
• Custom events and user flows
• Campaign and channel performance

With Google Analytics, you get pre-built reports, custom dashboards, and the ability to segment and filter data in endless ways.

Advanced users can leverage features like:

• Custom metrics and dimensions
• Ecommerce and multi-channel tracking
• User ID views and cohort analysis
• Attribution modeling
• Real-time reporting
• Data imports/exports
• BigQuery exports for large data

But Google Analytics isn‘t just for tech experts. With just 30-60 minutes a week, anyone can start extracting value.

Here are three areas for beginners to focus on:

Monitor Traffic Sources

Your number one priority should be identifying where your website visitors are coming from.

The Acquisition > Overview report shows the traffic breakdown across categories like:

• Direct – Users coming directly via URL
• Organic Search – From search engine results
• Referrals – Sites linking to you
• Social Media
• Email
• Paid Ads

(Image credit: Google Analytics demo account)

This tells you which channels drive the most users, so you can double down on what works.

It also helps when deciding budgets – i.e. more paid search if it brings lots of conversions. For newer sites, focus on building referrals and organic search initially.

Analyze Site Content

Next, you need to know what content users engage with most on your site.

The Behavior > Site Content report shows page views, bounce rates and times spent on each page. Sorting by page views shows the most popular content. High bounce rates indicate poor page quality.

(Image credit: Google Analytics demo account)

Looking at landing pages is also crucial, as that‘s the first touchpoint with users. Sorting your top landing pages and comparing engagement metrics helps optimize first impressions.

You can further filter content by source/medium to see what pages specific campaigns or referrers sent traffic to. This helps improve conversions from each channel.

Set Goals and Conversions

The last step is tracking business goals like lead captures, purchases, or any desired user action.

Under Admin > Goals, you can define different types of conversions like:

• Page views
• Button clicks
• Form submissions
• PDF downloads
• Email signups
• Ecommerce purchases

Google gives you the JavaScript snippet to add to your site. Once implemented, you‘ll get goal conversion rates and volumes.

(Image credit: Google Analytics demo account)

Monitoring goal metrics shows how effectively your site generates business outcomes. Increase conversion rates by optimizing landing pages and simplifying user flows.

With just these three analyses, you can continuously improve website traffic, engagement and conversions using free Google Analytics.

Additional Tips and Tricks

Here are some pro tips to further explore:

• Segment users – Analyze traffic by device, geography, age etc. See if engagement differs across segments.
• Do cohort analysis – Track user retention flows over time. See how behaviors change from initial visit onwards.
• Track campaigns – Use UTMs to tag marketing channels. See direct campaign performance impact.
• Implement remarketing – Build custom audiences to re-engage visitors who left.
• Compare time periods– Look at week-over-week and month-over-month trends to spot changes.
• A/B test – Try variations of page design or content to see impact on conversions.
• Inspect user flows– See drop off rates across conversion funnels to identify roadblocks.
• Link to other tools – Connect GA to platforms like Search Console, Data Studio, or CRMs for deeper insights.

The built-in GA Academy training is a great way to master features at your own pace. Their forums also help troubleshoot any implementation issues.

So don‘t be intimidated by the depth of Google Analytics! Start with the basics above, and you‘ll be leveraging its full power in no time.

#2 Website Uptime: Don‘t Lose Traffic to Downtime

Have you ever experienced a website crash right when you were about to make a purchase or book tickets? Chances are you jumped to a competitor site instead.

(Image credit: Freshworks)

According to a 2021 survey, even minimal website downtime results in significant lost revenue:

(Source: Statista)

Monitoring tools help minimize this by alerting you the second outages occur.

Here are two must-have solutions:

UptimeRobot

UptimeRobot is a free website monitoring service used by over 200,000 sites.

It works by pinging your site every 5 minutes from 50+ global locations. You get instant email and SMS alerts if uptime drops below 100%:

The free plan lets you monitor one URL. Paid plans ($14.50/mo and up) track unlimited sites and give more detailed analytics.

Once set up, you‘ll never be left unaware about site crashes again.

FreshPing

FreshPing provides similar always-on monitoring by pinging from 9 global regions every minute.

It also checks page load speeds and integrates with Slack, Telegram, and more to send alerts.

Like UptimeRobot, you can track one site for free forever. Paid plans start at $9/month for up to 7 websites.

Combining both free tools ensures your site stability is doubly covered.

Here are some best practices when setting up monitoring:

• Check the homepage and key landing pages separately.
• Enable both email and SMS alerts for instant notifications.
• Set up public status pages to display uptime metrics.
• Integrate with services like PagerDuty to auto-escalate alerts.
• Review monthly uptime reports to identify recurring failures.
• Use log data from your host/CDN to diagnose the root cause of crashes.

Near 100% uptime is a must for any website aiming to rank high on Google and convert visitors. Don‘t lose potential business to avoidable outages again!

#3 Lighthouse Audits: Catch Technical Errors Before Users

Beyond traffic and uptime metrics, technical errors directly impact visitor satisfaction on your site.

Pages that load slowly or have broken elements result in high bounce rates. Google also factors site speed and mobile-friendliness into rankings:

(Image Credit: Think With Google)

Auditing for such issues manually is impossible at scale. That‘s where automated tools like Google Lighthouse come in.

Lighthouse is a free web app auditor built into Chrome. To use it:

• Open any webpage
• Right click and select Inspect
• Go to the Lighthouse tab
• Generate report

In under a minute, Lighthouse runs over 100 checks related to:

• Performance – Page load speeds, image optimization etc.
• Accessibility – Screen reader capability, ARIA labels etc.
• Best Practices – HTTPS, browser errors, meta tags etc.
• SEO – Title tags, links, indexing directives etc.

You get a full report of scores for each section and exact fixes needed:

(Image Credit: Google Lighthouse)

Running Lighthouse scans regularly helps catch errors before they impact visitors.

Here are some common problems it identifies:

• Large image files – Compressing oversized images improves load times.
• Blocking JavaScript – Deferred JS allows HTML to load first.
• Unused CSS – Removing unneeded CSS boosts performance.
• Lack of alt text – Adding descriptions aids accessibility.
• HTTP URLs – Switching to HTTPS enables encryption.
• Incorrect metadata – Fixing titles, descriptions, tags etc. improves SEO.
• No canonical tag – Prevents duplicate content issues.

You can further automate Lighthouse audits site-wide using browser extensions like Sitebulb. This continuously surfaces problems at scale.

Prioritizing fixes by start date, affected traffic, and platform can make remediation easier. For example:

• Quick wins – compressing images
• Medium term – optimizing JS/CSS delivery
• Longer term – overhauling site architecture

With incremental remediation, sites often see substantial gains. This case study improved performance by 45% and conversions by 25%:

(Source: Think With Google)

Lighthouse audits give you the technical insights needed to delight users and boost SEO simultaneously.

Conclusion & Next Steps

Implementing these three free analytics solutions – Google Analytics, uptime monitoring, and technical audits – is the fastest way to level up your website‘s visibility and performance as we head into 2023.

Here‘s a recap of the value each provides:

• Google Analytics – Track real visitor behaviors, identify high-performing content, and monitor conversions.
• Uptime monitoring – Get instant alerts if your site goes down so you minimize revenue loss.
• Lighthouse audits – Catch technical errors impacting visitors before they notice.

Combined, you get a 360-degree view of your website‘s key metrics and flaws. And because each tool is free or low cost, you can monitor these factors daily instead of waiting for quarterly reports from an agency.

The next step is to extract insights from the numbers:

• Set 1-2 core metrics to focus on improving each quarter
• Create processes to monitor dashboards weekly and set up notifications
• Build a task list to tackle website errors and optimization opportunities
• Share reports with cross-functional teams like marketing, product, devs
• Train colleagues on the basics of using each analytics platform

With a data-driven culture, your organization can move much faster. You‘ll create high-impact learnings even when relying on free tools.

So don‘t let limited budget prevent you from leveraging web analytics! With this guide‘s top recommendations, you now have all the resources needed to drive growth through data. Reach out if you need any assistance getting started!