How to Use Analytics to Improve Your Website

Now let’s get to the good stuff. Analytics isn’t just about collecting numbers, it’s about using them to make meaningful changes. Each data point will tell a story over time. 

Data + Time = Patterns

The key is not to get overly excited by one number and rush to make big changes. Spikes and dips can happen for all kinds of reasons, and reacting too quickly can waste time and money. Instead, focus on spotting consistent patterns. That’s how you identify the root cause of what’s working (or not working) — and make changes that have a real impact.

This marketing guideline is your cheat sheet to making actionable improvements to your website through your analytics. If you have already dived into the articles on Marketing Analytics and Website Analytics Made Simple you are ready to start using analytics to improve your website. 

In this guideline you'll find a cheatsheet of sorts for the following analytics areas:

• Low Traffic

• High Bounce Rate

• Low Conversions

• Underperforming Content

• Mobile vs Desktop Performance

Low Traffic

Seeing low website traffic can feel discouraging, but the good news is, it’s one of the easiest metrics to understand and improve. Traffic is the fuel for your website funnel: without enough people visiting, you won’t generate the sales, leads, or engagement you’re aiming for.

What You’re Seeing

• Low numbers of users and sessions each month, with no steady growth

• A noticeable decline in traffic compared to previous periods

How to Troubleshoot

Traffic Sources

• Look at which channels are currently driving the most traffic to your site.

• Focus your efforts on the best-performing channels for the next month or two to see if traffic increases.

• Explore new opportunities for visibility with your target audience. For example:

  • Run a campaign on social media or search ads.

  • Partner with other websites for referral traffic.

  • Test content and promotions on the channels where your audience spends time.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Remember that SEO takes time. It can take 4–6 months before you see even small improvements in your rankings. So be patient.

• Site Audit: Use an SEO tool to ensure your site is meeting technical requirements (page speed, meta tags, mobile-friendliness, etc.).

• Keyword Research: Optimize your content with the right keywords for your business and your primary audience. Make sure the keywords you choose have enough search volume to drive traffic and are relevant to your offerings.

• Content Strategy: Publish valuable content regularly (blogs, videos, guides) around high-performing keywords to steadily build organic search traffic.

Pro Tip: Don’t chase traffic for traffic’s sake. Low traffic paired with a high conversion rate may mean you’re attracting the right people, you just need more of them. Focus on quality sources that align with your target audience.

High Bounce Rate

This is a very common and often frustrating metric to see. The good news is that bounce rate can be incredibly revealing. Once you identify the root cause, addressing it can have a major impact on your website’s overall performance. Let’s look at some potential causes. 

What You’re Seeing

• Bounce Rate + Engaged Sessions:

  • High Bounce Rate + Low Engaged Sessions - users are leaving your site without even viewing one full page.

  • High Bounce Rate + High/Okay Engaged Sessions - users are consuming one piece of content and then leaving. This is common for content-driven sites, where visitors read one article or watch one video before exiting.

You can find Bounce Rate in your website’s built-in analytics or Google Analytics. In GA4, you’ll also see Engaged Sessions (sessions where your users are actually engaging with your site), this adds context and helps you reduce guesswork. Looking at these two data points together tells a more complete story.

How to Troubleshoot

Audience Analysis

• A frequent culprit for high bounce rates is a mismatch between your site and your audience. Ask yourself:

  • Does my website content, style, and user experience align with the target audience I want to reach?

  • Is the audience I identified as my “primary audience” actually the right one for my product, service, or brand?

Traffic Source

• Break down bounce rate by traffic source. This helps reveal mismatches between what visitors expect and what they get:

  • Traffic sources with high user/session counts AND high bounce rates: Investigate further. Often this happens when an ad, social post, or link sets the wrong expectation. Visitors click expecting one thing, but the landing page delivers something else, resulting in a quick exit.

  • Traffic sources with healthy user/session counts AND low bounce rates: This is the metric you want to achieve. Compare these against higher-bounce sources to see what’s different (messaging, targeting, or alignment).

User Experience (UX)

• Load Speed: Slow sites are bounce magnets. If your pages take too long to load, visitors are going to get frustrated and will leave before they even see your content.

• Ease of Use: Is your site intuitive? Can users quickly figure out where to click and how to find what they need? Website visitors have short attention spans, and if you are not getting them where they need to go quickly, they will leave your site and find another. 

Trust and Professionalism

• Even beyond UX (User Experience), first impressions matter. If your website looks outdated, unprofessional, or untrustworthy, users may assume it’s a scam and exit right away.

Engagement Flow (Content Sites in Particular)

• For content-heavy sites, a high bounce rate paired with decent engagement often means users are consuming one piece of content and leaving without exploring further. To fix this, create a clear user flow that encourages visitors to keep going:

  • Add suggested “next articles” or related blog posts.

  • Include internal links to relevant resources.

  • Use CTAs that invite readers to continue learning or exploring your site.

Pro Tip: Don’t panic over bounce rate alone. It’s just a starting point. Combine it with engagement metrics, traffic source data, and user experience checks to identify the real reason people leave, and take action from there. When working with your bounce rate data points, the important thing to watch for is changes over time. 

Low conversions

Conversions are the main reason for your website, and the metric you will be paying the most attention to. Whether your goal is sales, lead generation, or content engagement, a lack of conversions means your site isn’t delivering the results you want. The key is to identify whether the issue lies in traffic quality, user behavior, or the conversion process itself.

What You’re Seeing

• Scenario 1: Low Overall Conversions + High Conversion Rate You don’t have many conversions, but the visitors you do attract are converting well.

• Scenario 2: Low Conversions + Low Conversion Rate Few visitors are taking the desired action (e.g., purchases, sign-ups, downloads).

• Scenario 3: Okay or High Conversions + Low Conversion Rate Conversions are happening, but compared to your total traffic, the percentage is low. This isn’t always bad — sometimes it reflects your site’s purpose or user mix.

How to Troubleshoot

Scenario 1: Low Conversions + High Conversion Rate

• The good news: you’re attracting the right audience and are on the right path.

• The fix: get a higher volume of this audience. Identify ways to reach more of your target audience and implement campaigns to drive them to your website. Some examples include:

  • Double down on channels that are already sending you high-quality traffic.

  • Explore new channels that reach the same primary audience.

  • Expand your reach to a new secondary audience. 

Scenario 2: Low Conversions + Low Conversion Rate

The challenge: Your visitors aren’t taking action. They’re coming to your site but not completing the goals you’ve set, whether that’s making a purchase, submitting a form, or signing up for your email list.

Step 1: Identify Exit Points

Start by using your analytics to pinpoint where users are leaving the funnel:

• High Bounce Rate (Top of Funnel): Users leave without engaging — see the High Bounce Rate section for troubleshooting.

• Exiting Before Add-to-Cart (eCommerce): Mid-funnel problem. Visitors browse but don’t show strong purchase intent.

• Exiting Before Checkout or Form Completion: Bottom-funnel friction. Users are interested but stop short of converting.

Step 2: Troubleshooting for eCommerce and Lead Generation Sites

Mid-Funnel (Engagement & Trust)

At this stage, users may be comparing competitors or are not yet convinced of your value. Your goal is to build connection and trust.

1. Find the pages that could be causing friction: A stronger connection needs to be created with your audience. Let’s dive deeper into how to find the actual pages that potentially hold the root cause:

   • Pageviews: Identify your most and least visited pages.

   • Time on Page: Look for pages where users don’t spend enough time.

   • Exit Pages: (From Step 1) Review which pages visitors view right before leaving.

     
     

2. Ask yourself: What needs to change on these pages to convince someone from your target audience to take action? Possible adjustments:

   • Refine messaging to better connect with your audience’s goals or pain points.

   • Strengthen trust signals (add testimonials, reviews, or secure checkout badges).

   • Review product descriptions, imagery, and layout for clarity and appeal.

   • Add or update stronger CTAs. Make sure “Buy Now” or “Sign Up” buttons are visible, action-oriented, and persuasive.

   • Pricing:

     • Compare against competitors, are you pricing yourself out of the market?

     • If you’re premium-priced, clearly highlight the unique value or quality that justifies it.

Bottom-Funnel (Conversions & Revenue)

Here’s where small friction points can stop a sale or lead at that last second.

Focus on:

• Cart Flow: Simplify checkout to make it fast, intuitive, and trustworthy.

• Payment Options: Offer multiple ways to pay: digital wallets, credit/debit, PayPal, etc don’t give buyers an excuse to abandon your funnel at the payment step.

• Price Shock: Minimize unexpected fees or extra costs that scare off buyers and cause cart abandonment.

• Forms (Lead Gen): Keep forms short, clean, and professional. Add an incentive or clear reason to sign up,“What’s in it for me?”

Step 3: Troubleshooting for Content & Engagement Websites and Sections

For blogs, online magazines, and content-driven brands, conversions might look different. Your identified goals are going to be clicks, subscriptions, or deeper engagement.

What to analyze:

• Pageviews, Time on Page, and Exit Pages: Identify where readers are dropping off or losing interest.

How to optimize:

• Strengthen CTAs to guide readers to the next action (read another post, download a guide, or subscribe).

• Improve copy or headlines to better align with what visitors expect after clicking in.

• Streamline design to keep focus on your content and next-step actions.

• Ensure your content resonates and makes a strong connection with your target audience. (See our next section - Underperforming Content)

Scenario 3: Okay/High Conversions + Low Conversion Rate Sometimes, this isn’t a problem at all. Here are some cases where a low conversion rate can still be healthy:

• Mixed-Use Sites: If your site serves multiple purposes (e.g., blog and eCommerce, membership and event sign-ups), not every visitor comes to convert.

• High-Consideration Purchases: For expensive or big-decision items (e.g., vacations, events, consulting), visitors often research multiple times before committing. You may be in the clear if user behavior matches the next bullet point:

• High Repeat Users: If visitors come back often before converting, this can signal healthy engagement.

What to Do:

• Analyze audience behavior by traffic source and user flow to see which groups convert better.

• Focus resources on audiences and channels that generate higher-quality conversions.

• Make small, incremental changes to test improvements (e.g., CTA text, button placement, pricing display). Avoid sweeping overhauls that risk disrupting what’s working.

Pro Tip: Low conversions aren’t always a single problem with a single fix. Break it down: Are you reaching enough people? Are the wrong people showing up? Or are the right people dropping off before converting? Answering those questions helps you focus your efforts where they’ll have the biggest impact.

Make small changes - test and assess. You are seeing conversions, you just want to increase your conversion rate without affecting your overall conversions. By making minor adjustments you can optimize your efforts without sacrificing conversions. 

Underperforming Content

Content is often the driving force of a website, whether it’s blog posts, videos, product descriptions, or promotional copy. When your content underperforms, visitors aren’t engaging with it, and that means missed opportunities to inform, build trust, and convert.

What You’re Seeing

• Low time on page. visitors skim and leave quickly

• Short video views, people drop off after just a few seconds

• Low or no clicks on links and CTAs pointing to other content

• High bounce rates from content pages that you have directed traffic to via email, ads, or social media

How to Troubleshoot

Create Highly Engaging ContentIf visitors aren’t staying on your pages or watching your videos for long, you likely haven’t grabbed their interest.

• Hook them fast: People have a 6–10 second attention span before deciding whether or not to stay. Lead with a strong opening line, striking image, or compelling headline.

• Answer “What’s in it for me?”: Make sure content is immediately relatable and highlights a clear benefit for your audience.

• Sometimes less is more: We want to give our website users all the information we feel is relevant, but we have to ask ourselves if our content length is adapted to what our audience actually wants. Long form content can be very useful, but sometimes we need to break that out into multiple pieces (blog posts, videos, podcasts) that are shorter in length. 

Audience Analysis

If you’re seeing high bounce rates, low engagement, and no clicks, you may not be reaching the right audience, or your content isn’t tailored to them.

• Attract the right people: Audit your traffic sources to confirm that the visitors coming to your site match the audience you built it for. Driving the wrong audience wastes both time and money. Focus your efforts on the platforms your target audiences actually use so your content and campaigns reach the right people.

• Tailor content to your target audience: Consider language, tone, format (blog, video, podcast), and references that resonate with your visitors.

Content Positioning

Even strong content can underperform if it’s not presented well.

• Optimize layout and readability: Break long paragraphs into shorter sections, and use clear headers, bullet points, and visuals. Most visitors skim before they read, so make your content approachable and easy to scan. Short, well-formatted sections feel less intimidating — and once you capture their attention, readers are far more likely to dive in.

• Match the medium to your audience: Does your audience prefer written guides, quick videos, or infographics? Give your audience what they are looking for in the format they want to consume. 

Strengthen Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

If visitors aren’t clicking through to related content or offers, check the visibility and strength of your CTAs.

• Make CTAs stand out visually (buttons, contrasting colors).

• Use persuasive, benefit-driven language (“Learn How,” “See Examples,” “Get Started Today”).

Use High-Quality Visuals

Low-quality or generic imagery can drag down content performance. Always use high-quality visuals in order to draw your website visitors in and gain their trust.

• Invest in compelling images, graphics, or video stills that reinforce the message and draw attention.

• Visuals should make CTAs and key messages pop, not blend into the background.

Pro Tip: Underperforming content isn’t always a failure — it’s feedback. Look at what is resonating, and use those insights to refresh weak pages, repurpose strong ideas into new formats, and double down on what your audience truly values.

Mobile vs. Desktop Performance

It’s no longer enough to just have a good-looking website, you need a site that works seamlessly across all devices. The way your visitors experience your site on mobile versus desktop can have a major impact on engagement, conversions, and even your SEO rankings.

What You’re Seeing

• Significant differences in behavior between mobile and desktop visitors (bounce rates, time on page, session duration, or conversions).

• A clear majority of users on one type of device (e.g., 80% mobile or 80% desktop).

  
  

How to Troubleshoot

Optimize for All DevicesIf behavior differs drastically between mobile and desktop, the problem is often user experience.

• Ensure your site is:

  • Responsive (layouts adapt to all screen sizes, including tablets).

  • Fast-loading (mobile users will especially drop if pages lag).

  • Intuitive to navigate (menus, buttons, and CTAs should be easy to find and click on smaller screens).

Audience Analysis

A heavy skew toward either mobile or desktop isn’t always bad, but it’s important to understand why.

• Audience Preferences: Different audiences typically have different device preferences:

  • Gen Z and Millennials lean heavily mobile.

  • Gen X and Boomers often prefer desktop.

• Use this insight to shape how you design, format, and prioritize content.

Conversions and Conversion Rate

Determine whether your audience prefers to browse on one device and convert on another, or if they complete their entire website experience on a single device.

• Device use often reflects when and how people engage:

  • Mobile - on-the-go browsing, quick content consumption.

  • Desktop - deeper research, higher-value purchases.

• Conversions + Device Type: 

  • Do desktop or mobile users check out more often?

  • Are mobile users abandoning forms or carts?

If so, the issue could be:

• A clunky mobile checkout or form experience.

• Payment options that are limited or not mobile-friendly.

• Design elements that make trust harder to build on small screens.

• Conversions + Conversion Rate: (See Low Conversions Section)

  • Are you seeing both low conversions and low conversions rate? (See above for troubleshooting)

  • Are you seeing high conversions and low conversion rate? It is possible that your audience prefers to browse on one device and convert on another. See the above section for more information. 

Pro Tip: Don’t just test your site on your own device. Regularly view it on different phones, tablets, and desktops to see what your audience sees. Even small improvements in mobile performance can make a big difference in reducing bounce rates and boosting conversions.

Putting It Into Action: Simple Yet Effective

Reading about analytics is one thing, using it is another. My goal is to make analytics simple enough for anyone to take action on, no matter where you are in your experience or comfort level. So let’s start small and work through this step-by-step process:

Step 1: Choose One Area to Focus On

• Instead of trying to fix everything at once, pick the biggest pain point (traffic, bounce rate, conversions, content, or device performance).

Step 2: Record Your Baseline

• Open your analytics tool and write down the current numbers for the key metrics in that area. This gives you a benchmark to compare against later.

Step 3: Identify the Likely Cause

• Use the troubleshooting guidelines in this article to pinpoint the most common reasons behind the issue.

• If you still are unsure about the cause 

  • Formulate any new questions you have

  • Look for other data points that would provide answers to these questions

  • Repeat steps 2 & 3

Step 4: Make One Targeted Change

• Resist the urge to overhaul everything at once. Choose one small, specific adjustment that addresses the root cause.

Step 5: Test and Measure Over Time

• Choose a timeline to track your changes. A month to two months typically will give you a good sense if things are moving in the right direction. Some data points will need more time to see the full picture. 

• Don’t react to single-day spikes or dips, instead look for consistent trends.

Step 6: Repeat the Cycle

• Once you’ve tested one change, move on to the next. Over time, these small improvements stack up into major gains for your site.

After you do this process once you will see how it gets easier and easier, and you’ll benefit from the valuable insights the data will show you along the way.

Quick Reminder: Analytics is a long game. Patterns reveal themselves over time, not overnight. Keep testing, measuring, and refining, and you’ll build a website that truly works for your business.

Moving Forward With Confidence

Website analytics isn’t about drowning in numbers, it’s about uncovering patterns that help you make smarter decisions. By focusing on traffic, bounce rates, conversions, content performance, and device usage, you’ll start to see where your website is helping (or holding back) your business.

The key is to:

• Start simple - pick one area to improve.

• Make small, focused changes - avoid overhauling everything at once.

• Track over time - look for trends, not one-off spikes.

With this approach, you’ll not only improve your website’s performance, but you’ll also gain confidence in using data to guide your business decisions.