Getting started with Squarespace? Sign up for a free trial here and use the code PARTNER10 for 10% off your first year (Yep, that's an affiliate link!)

Do you know if your website traffic is growing month to month? Or how many of your website visitors are becoming subscribers? Which marketing efforts you are focusing on that are paying off?

No?

Well let’s change that!

Knowing and understanding your website analytics is a great way to know and understand what is working to grow your website, and what needs some adjusting.

This is part 2 in the Squarespace Analytics Explained series. You can check out the first post here, which covers:

• How to access your Squarespace Analytics

• Where your traffic is coming from

• Keywords people are searching to find your website

Understanding Squarespace Analytics

Note: All screenshots in this post are from a separate website not www.jessicahainesdesign.com

Activity Log

This is a fun little page that shows us more details about when someone is visiting our website and what they are doing while they are there so we can really get our super sleuth on and find out more about our visitors.

On this page, we can see the date and time someone has visited out website, their IP address (which lets us see who is doing what), and the pages they have visited while there.

What’s more, when you click on any of these results to find out more information such as where they are from, how they found your website, and their browser and computer details!

Each different IP address is a different visitor, and by looking at all of the entries for a particular IP address, you can see:

• What time someone landed on your website and where they came from

• What pages they went to and in which order

• How long they spent on the initial pages (unfortunately you can’t see how long they are on the last one though)

• And what page they last visited before leaving your website

This info is really helpful as a website owner since you can tell what information people are interested if they hang around on a page for a while, which can help you to create more content that is similar.

You can also see that if your visitors are always leaving a particular page quickly, that page may need a little TLC to get people to stay longer, such as restructuring the content or rewriting parts of the page.

And if someone is hitting your website and only visiting one page before leaving, seeing where they are leaving could give you ideas on how to keep them around longer, such as changing up your calls to action on that page or adding some related posts.

Form & Button Conversions

This page is a goldmine for seeing how well your forms and buttons are performing!

At the top of the page, you’ll see a section for Form Submissions and one for Button Clicks. Below these, you’ll see a percentage in green if the results are higher than the previous month, or red if they are lower than the previous month, so you’ll know how you are going over time.

When you click on either of these, the graph below will update to visually show these details at a glance, so you can see how many people signed up for which form or clicked which button, on each day of the month.

At a glance, this information will let you know how people are using the forms and buttons on your website.

Scroll down a little, and you’ll see a table that shows how many people viewed the page with the form or button, along with how many times from that page the form or button was submitted, and the conversion rate percentage. This is a great way to see how well each button and form is performing.

The conversion rate is calculated by (submissions ÷ views) x 100 to give you percentage, and the higher the percentage, the better the form or button is performing.

If you notice your conversion rates are lower than you expected for a particular form or button, it could be time to change things up. Some ways you could do this could be:

• Change up the wording on the button

• Experiment with the length of a form

• Try making the form pop up from a button using lightbox mode

• Avoid any unnecessary questions on forms so it stays to the point

• Change up the explanation for a button

• Experiment with moving it to a different position on your website

• Swap some calls to action to see if a different order works better

• Add an image to help catch someone’s attention

• Use a larger button size so it stands out more

Now just a word of warning on this page... If you have multiple forms or buttons on your website, and they are all named the same thing, it can get pretty confusing to tell which is which, so giving them unique names can help.

Popular Content

The popular content tab in your analytics tells you exactly that – what pages on your website are the most popular based on the number of page views.

Looking at your top performing content can be a great way to get ideas for new content to write. You’ll be able to check out what your top posts have in common to see what’s worked well, and create more of the right content that keeps your visitors coming back to you.

This could also be an opportunity to expand on the popular content, such as creating an email course, checklist, webinar or workbook that you can use to entice your visitors to sign up for your email list so you can nurture them over time.

These popular posts could also be a good opportunity to add in related post links, which could encourage people to hang around reading your blog for even longer.

Looking at the bottom performing content can also be really helpful. If these posts aren’t resonating with your visitors, it’s time to reassess them.

Maybe they’re all the one category of post, and it could be worth ditching that category. Or maybe the posts just needs a new headline and a little editing to make it more successful. It could even be that you haven’t done anything to drive traffic to that post and you just need to share it to your audience so they know it’s there.

Assessing your past content to see what is doing well and what is a bit of a flop can be eye opening, but it will strengthen your content moving forward, which in turn will help you grow your website further.

One last note about this page... If you click on one of the pages, it will actually take you through to the page so you can look over the post in more detail.

Site Search Keywords

Want to know what your website visitors are searching on your website?

Yep, this is how you can see!

When you have a search bar in your navigation or somewhere else on your website, you will be able to see what your website visitors have been looking for on your website.

If your content matches what your visitors are searching for, that’s great, but if not, you might get some good ideas for new blog posts to write that your audience would love.

Another great feature on this page is that you can click on the keyword to see which pages your visitor then went to. Just remember, this number may not match the number of searches if they don’t click on any post, or if they visit multiple pages.

If you haven’t have anyone complete a search within the timeframe you’ve selected at the top of the page, you’ll see the message “No Data Available”.

RSS Subscribers

If you have blog readers that subscribe to your website through an RSS tool such as Bloglovin’, Feedly, Flipboard or Feedburner, this tab shows an estimate of how many users you have subscribed at any point.

For those of you that may not know what an RSS reader is, it’s a handy tool that collects all the latest posts from the different blogs and websites that you read all into the one place so you don’t have to go to each individual website. Huge timesaver if you’re a blog reader!

If you have multiple collections on your website, you can filter through each individual one, or all of them together. And if one of your RSS feeds is an podcast, you will also see all of the Apple Podcasts traffic here as well.

So there you have it, how to read and understand your Squarespace analytics, and how you can use it to really grow your website to have even more impact online.

By taking some time to check in on your analytics, you’ll be able to assess how to your marketing efforts are paying off, and you’ll be producing content your audience loves, which will help position you well ahead of your competition!

If you haven’t already, don’t forget to check out part 1 of this Squarespace Analytics series as well.

Looking for help to launch a website you love?