Introducing Your Brand New Web Analytics Dashboard

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Your company’s website is the central hub for your prospects’ and customers’ interactions with your online brand. The more information you have about those interactions, the more effectively you’ll be able to design your site around your buyers’ behaviors, and the more business you’ll be able to close from your website at the end of the day.

Your new web analytics dashboard brings a slew of new metrics on your website’s effectiveness --- time on site, new vs. returning visitors, bounce rate, device type (mobile vs. desktop), sessions by country, and more --- into the friendly confines of your HubSpot portal. No extra tools or tracking codes necessary.

How it Works

Navigate to your Marketing Dashboard and use the Dashboards dropdown to select Web Analytics Dashboard.

You’ll be greeted by your brand new dashboard: 

To start, note that your new dashboard has all the features you’re used to in HubSpot Dashboards.

• Drag and drop reports with the click of a mouse.
• Download a PDF or PPT version of the dashboard using the “Export” button.
• Set up a recurring email of the dashboard (e.g. before your Monday morning marketing meeting) using “Share” in the upper-right corner.

Here’s a quick rundown of the reports you’ll see on the dashboard:

• Traffic Metrics. Total sessions, % new sessions, and % mobile sessions during your selected timeframe. 
• Sessions. The number of sessions over time, split out by new vs. returning sessions. Note that, in this case, we're talking about new sessions, not new visitors. In other words, what percent of the engagements with your website come from people who've never been there before?
• Engagement Metrics. Your website’s bounce rate, average time on site, and pages per session.
• Session Sources. Sessions over time, split out by original source (organic, paid, etc.). 
• Session Engagement Rates by Source. Bounce rate, average time on site, and pages per session, broken down by original source.
• New Visitors by Source. Traffic from new visitors, broken down by original source. 
• Average Pages per Session by Source. How many pages visitors viewed in an average session, split out by original source. 
• Average Session Length by Source. Number of minutes and seconds spent on your website per session, broken down by original source.
• Bounce Rate by Source. Bounce rate --- number of sessions with only one page view divided by total number of sessions --- by original source. 
• Sessions by Device Type. The number of sessions broken by mobile vs. desktop. 
• Device Type Breakdown. Mobile vs. desktop, in pie chart form.
• Session Country. The countries where your sessions originated, identified by IP address. Any of these reports can be added to your other dashboards in HubSpot. Want a snapshot of your device type metrics on your primary marketing dashboard? Add it in two clicks using “Add Report” in the upper-right corner.

How to use the Data

Need a few ideas on how to use the new data? Here some questions to get your wheels spinning:

• What’s the bounce rate among visitors from different sources?
  
  Look at the bounce rates among visitors from different sources, and try to spot trends over time.
  
  Let's say your bounce rate is particularly high (or increasing steadily) for visitors coming from social media -- take a close look at the message you're using to accompany the content you're distributing. Ask yourself the question: "Would a visitor clicking on the link in your Twitter or Facebook post expect to see the headline and initial image on the ensuing page? If the answer is "no," your promotion strategy might need some work.
  
  When you're distributing your website's content, make sure the messaging actually matches the page to which you're directing visitors. You have to clearly meet the expectations of the visitor -- regardless of source.
  
  

• What country are your visitors coming from?
  
  If you see a glut of sessions starting from certain countries, think about how your content speaks to those countries. Is it in the right language? Do your buyer personas look the same everywhere?
  
  A simple solution: Use smart content and smart calls-to-action to adapt your website to your visitors’ locations. Show visitors from South America a Spanish-language CTA or German visitors a piece of content that references something in German pop culture.
  
  
• Is the majority of your site from mobile?
  
  Use this information to craft your mobile web strategy. On the whole, there are now more searches and traffic coming from mobile devices than desktops. That makes it crucial to not only provide a mobile-ready experience, but to make sure that experience is engaging.
  
  How annoying is it when you arrive at a mobile site, only to have to zoom-in to read its content? Having a responsive site is no longer enough -- engagement with the mobile version has to be user-friendly and interactive.
  
  For example, don’t include pop-up forms that take up the whole screen, and are impossible to close out. We all know how annoying those are. Use visitor-friendly popups that fit into the context of the session. Don’t include a 30-minute video on mobile: who watches a video that long on the go, from their phone or tablet? Include more bite-sized media on the mobile version of your site.

 

FAQ

There are new metrics I haven't seen in HubSpot before - what do these mean?

• Sessions - A session is a series of analytics activities taken by a visitor to your website. Activities can include page views, CTA clicks, events, etc. A session expires after 30 minute of inactivity
• Bounce Rate - number of sessions with exactly one analytics event. For example, a session with just a single page view: someone comes to your website, views just a single page, and leaves.

What is a session and how is it different from a visit?

A "session" and a "visit" are two different ways to categorize groups of interactions a visitor has on your website. Specifically, a visit is counted when a visitor arrives on your website from a page outside your website. A session, however, is a more comprehensive way of grouping interactions. Sessions take into account interactions other than page views, such as events and CTA clicks. Sessions also have time-based expirations, whereas a visit does not.

How will sessions change the Sources report?

At this time, sessions will not change or affect any data included in the Sources report.

Where can we leave leave feedback?

Via the in-app feedback widget.

 

The new web analytics dashboard is available to all Basic, Professional, and Enterprise HubSpot Marketing portals today.