Messages and visitors
Analytics
Understanding how many people visit your site, and what they look at.
In this article
The Analytics section tells you how many people visit your site, what they look at and where they come from.
To get there: in the left menu, click Analytics.
Choosing the period
At the top right, three buttons: 7 d, 30 d, 90 d. They show the last 7, 30 or 90 days.
30 days is the right setting day to day: long enough to smooth out variation, short enough to be current.
The four metrics at the top
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Page views | The total number of pages displayed. One person looking at three pages counts as three. |
| Unique visitors | The number of different people. This is the most meaningful figure. |
| Pages / visit | On average, how many pages a person looks at. |
| Bounce rate | The percentage of visitors who looked at only one page. |
How to read the bounce rate
A high bounce rate is not necessarily bad.
If a visitor lands on your home page, immediately finds your phone number and calls you, they are counted as a « bounce » — even though it is a complete success.
Do not try to push it down at all costs. Watch instead for a sudden jump: that can signal a problem on a page.
The charts
Visits per day
The traffic curve, day by day. Two lines: page views and visitors.
Look for trends, not details. A steady rise over three months is good news; a spike on one Tuesday means nothing.
Devices
The split between Desktop, Mobile and Tablet.
Top pages
The most viewed pages. Very useful: it tells you what your visitors are actually interested in — not what you believe interests them.
If your « Prices » page is the most visited, that is a sign to look after it particularly well.
Countries
Where your visitors come from. Switzerland should dominate by a wide margin. A little foreign traffic is normal.
Traffic sources
How visitors arrived: from Google, from Facebook, from another site…
If everything is at zero
Three possible explanations, in order of likelihood:
Your site is new. Visitors do not arrive straight away. Allow several weeks before Google indexes you properly. See Search engines (SEO).
No page is published. Check the status of your pages. See Publishing and unpublishing.
Nobody knows your address yet. That is the most common. A website does not attract visitors on its own.
Making your site known
The figures only rise if you hand out your address. What genuinely works:
- putting it on your business cards and letterhead;
- adding it to your e-mail signature;
- listing it in a professional directory or on your association's site;
- giving it to your referral network: doctors, pharmacists, physiotherapists;
- putting it on your practice door.
The best website in the world, with an address nobody has, gets no visits.