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• Homepage Design : Best Practices & Examples

  5 octobre 2022, par Erin

  Did you know users spend about 50 milliseconds deciding if they like your website’s homepage design or not ?

  With billions of websites and scrolling often done on the go, you have to make a strong first impression because the chances for a once-over are slim. 

  Learn how to design magnetically-appealing website homepages from this guide. 

  What is a homepage in web design ?

  Homepage is the front page of your website — a destination where users land when typing your website URL address. It’s located at the root of the website’s domain (e.g., matomo.org) or a subdomain (e.g., university.webflow.com).

  Design-wise a homepage has two goals :

  • Explain the purpose of the website and present overview information 
  • Provide top-level navigation to lower-level web pages (e.g., blog, sales pages, etc.) 

  Separately, a homepage is also the place where users will return each time they’ll feel stuck and want to start anew. Thus, your homepage website design should provide obvious navigation paths to other website areas.

  6 Must-Know Website Homepage Design Best Practices

  Behind every winning homepage design stands a detailed customer journey map. 

  A customer journey is a schematic representation of how site visitors will move around your website to accomplish various goals. 

  A good customer journey map lists different actions a user will take after landing on your website (e.g., browse product pages, save items to a wishlist, register an account, etc.) — and it does so for different audience segments. 

  

  Your homepage design should help users move from the first step on their journey (e.g., learning about your website) to the final one (e.g., converting to a paid customer). At the same time, your homepage should serve the needs of both new and returning visitors — prospects who may be at a different stage of their journey (e.g., consideration). 

  With the above in mind, let’s take a look at several website homepage design ideas and the reasons why they work. 

  1. Use Familiar Design Elements

  Whether you’re designing a new website or refreshing an old one, it’s always tempting to go “out of the box” — use horizontal scrolling, skip header navigation or include arty animations. 

  Bold design choices work for some brands, mainly those who aren’t using their website as a primary sales channel (e.g., luxury brands). 

  But unfamiliar design patterns can also intimidate a lot of shoppers. In one observational study, people were asked to guess where specific content (e.g., information on international calls) would be placed on a telecom website. 75% of users picked the same location. This means two things :

  • People already have expectations of where specific website information is typically placed 
  • Yet, one in four users struggles to identify the right areas even within standard website layouts

  So why make the job harder for them ? As UX consultant Peter Ramsey rightfully notes : 

  The truth is : designing the best experience isn’t about being unique, it’s about being easy. And guess what feels really easy to use ? Things that feel familiar.

  Therefore, analyse other homepage layout designs in your industry. Pay attention to the number and type of homepage screens and approaches to designing header/footer navigation. 

  Take some of those ideas as your “base”. Then make your homepage design on-brand with unique typography, icons, visuals and other graphic design elements.

  Take a cue from ICAM — a steel manufacturing company. Their niche isn’t typically exciting. Yet, their homepage design stops you in your tracks and tinkers your curiosity to discover more (even if you aren’t shopping for metalware). 

  

  The interesting part is that ICAM uses a rather standard homepage layout. You have a hero image in the first screen, followed by a multi-column layout of their industry expertise and an overview of manufacturers. 

  But this homepage design feels fresh because the company uses plenty of white space, bold typography and vibrant visuals. Also, they delay the creative twist (horizontal scrolling area) to the bottom of the homepage, meaning that it’s less likely to intimidate less confident web users. 

  2. Decide On The Optimal Homepage Layout 

  In web design, a homepage layout is your approach to visually organising different information on the screen. 

  Observant folks will notice that good homepage designs often have the same layout. For example, include a split-view “hero” screen with a call to action on the left and visuals (photo or video) on the left. 

  

  The reason for using similar layouts for website homepage design isn’t a lack of creativity. On the contrary, some layouts have become the “best practice” because they :

  • Offer a great user experience (UX) and don’t confuse first-time visitors 
  • Feel familiar and create a pleasurable sense of deja-vu among users 
  • Have proven to drive higher conversion rates through benchmarks and tests 

  Popular types of website homepage layouts : 

  • Single column – a classic option of presenting main content in a single, vertical column. Good choice for blogs, personal websites and simple corporate sites. 
  • Split screen layout divides the page in two equal areas with different information present. Works best for Ecommerce homepages (e.g., to separate different types of garments) or SaaS websites, offering two product types (e.g., a free personal product version and a business edition). 
  • Asymmetrical layout assumes dividing your homepage into areas of different size and styles. Asymmetry helps create specific focal points for users to draw their attention to the most prominent information. 
  • Grid of cards layout helps present a lot of information in a more digestible manner by breaking down bigger bulks of text into smaller cards — a graphic element, featuring an image and some texts. By tapping a card, users can then access extra content. 
  • Boxes are visually similar to cards, but can be of varying shape. For example, you can have a bigger header-width box area, followed by four smaller boxes within it. Both of these website layouts work well for Ecommerce. 
  • Featured image layout gives visuals (photos and videos) the most prominent placement on the homepage, with texts and other graphic design elements serving a secondary purpose. 
  • F-pattern layout is based on the standard eye movement most people have when reading content on the website. Eye tracking studies found that we usually pay the most attention to information atop of the page (header area), then scan horizontally before dripping down to the next vertical line until we find content that captures our attention. 

  User behaviour analytics (UBA) tools are the best way to determine what type of layout will work for your homepage. 

  For example, you can use Matomo Heatmaps and Session Recording to observe how users navigate your homepage, which areas or links they click and what blockers they face during navigation.

  

  Matomo can capture accurate behavioural insights because we track relative positions to elements within your websites. This approach allows us to provide accurate data for users with different browsers, operating systems, zoom-in levels and fonts. 

  The best part ? You can collect behavioural data from up to 100 different user segments to understand how different audience cohorts engage with your product.

  3. Include a One-Sentence Tagline

  A tagline is a one-line summary of what your company does and what its unique sales proposition (USP) is. It should be short, catchy and distinguish you from competitors.

  A modern homepage design practice is to include a call to action in the first screen. Why ? Because you then instantly communicate or remind of your value proposition to every user — and provide them with an easy way to convert whenever they are ready to do business with you. 

  Here’s how three companies with a similar product, a project management app, differentiate themselves through homepage taglines. 

  Monday.com positions itself as an operating system (OS) for work. 

  

  Basecamp emphasises its product simplicity and openly says that they are different from other overly-complex software. 

  

  Asana, in turn, addresses a familiar user pain point (siloed communication) that it attempts to fix with its product. 

  

  Coming up with the perfect homepage tagline is a big task. You may have plenty of ideas, but little confidence in what version will stick. 

  The best approach ? Let a series of A/B tests decide. You can test a roaster of homepage slogans on a rotating bi-weekly/monthly schedule and track how copy changes affect conversion rates. 

  With Matomo A/B test feature, you can create, track and manage all experiments straight from your web analytics app — and get consolidated reports on total page visitors and conversion rates per each tested variation. 

  

  Beyond slogans, you can also run A/B tests to validate submission form placements, button texts or the entire page layout. 

  For instance, you can benchmark how your new homepage design performs compared to the old version with a subset of users before making it publicly available. 

  4. Highlight The Main Tasks For The User

  Though casual browsing is a thing, most of us head to specific websites with a clear agenda — find information, compare prices, obtain services, etc. 

  Thus, your homepage should provide clear starting points for users’ main tasks (those you’ve also identified as conversion goals on your customer journey maps !).

  These tasks can include : 

  • Account registration 
  • Product demo request 
  • Newsletter sign-up 

  The best website homepage designs organically guide users through a set number of common tasks, one screen at a time. 

  Let’s analyse Sable homepage design. The company offers a no-fee bank account and a credit card product for soon-to-be US transplants. The main task a user has : Decide if they want to try Sable and hopefully open an account with them. 

  

  This mono-purpose page focuses on persuading a prospect that Sable is right for them. 

  The first screen hosts the main CTA with an animated drop-down arrow to keep scrolling. This is likely aimed at first-time visitors that just landed on the page from an online ad or social media post. 

  The second screen serves the main pitch — no-fee, no-hassle access to a US banking account that also helps you build your credit score. 

  The third screen encourages users to learn more about Sable Credit — the flagship product. For the sceptics, the fourth screen offers several more reasons to sign up for the credit product. 

  Then Sable moves on to pitching its second offering — a no-fee debit card with a cashback. Once again, the follow-up screen sweetens the deal by bringing up other perks (higher cashback for popular services like Amazon) and overcoming objections (no SSN required and multi-language support available). 

  The sequence ends with side-by-side product comparison and some extra social proof. 

  In Sable’s case, each homepage screen has a clear purpose and is designed to facilitate one specific user action — account opening. 

  For multi-product companies, the above strategy works great for designing individual landing pages. 

  5. Design Proper Navigation Paths

  All websites have two areas reserved for navigation : 

  • Header menu 
  • Footer menu 

  Designing an effective header menu is more important since it’s the primary tool visitors will use to discover other pages. 

  Your header menu can be :

  • Sticky — always visible as the person keeps scrolling. 
  • Static — e.g., a hidden drop-down menu. 

  If you go for a static header and have a longer homepage layout (e.g., 5+ screens), you also need to add extra navigation elements somewhere mid-page. Or else users might not figure out where to go next and merely bounce off. 

  You can do this by : 

  • Promoting other areas of your website (e.g., sub-category pages) by linking out to them 
  • Adding a carousel of “recent posts”, “recommended reads” and “latest products” 
  • Using buttons and CTAs to direct users towards specific actions (e.g., account registration) or assets (free eBook)

  For instance, cosmetics brand Typology doesn’t have a sticky header on the homepage. Instead, they prompt discovery by promoting different product categories (best sellers, bundles, latest arrivals) and their free skin diagnostic quiz — a great engagement mechanism to retain first time users.

  

  Once the user scrolls down to the bottom of the page, they should have an extra set of navigational options — aka footer links. 

  Again, these help steer the visitor towards discovering more content without scrolling back up to the top of your homepage. 

  Nielsen Norman Group says that people mostly use footers as :

  • A second chance to be convinced — after reading the entire homepage, the user is ready to give your product a go.
    
  • The last resort for hard-to-find content that’s not displayed in global header navigation (e.g., Terms and Conditions or shipping information pages).

  As a rule of thumb, you should designate the following information to the footer : 

  • Utility links (Contact page, Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy, etc.) 
  • Secondary-task links (e.g., Career page, Investor Details, Media contacts, etc.) 
  • Brands within the organisation (if you operate several) 
  • Customer engagement link (email newsletters and social media buttons)

  The key is to keep the area compact — not more than one standard user screen resolution of 1280×720. 

  6. Show Users What’s Clickable (Or Not) 

  A homepage invites your site visitors on a journey. But if they don’t know which elements to click, they aren’t going to get anywhere.

  Good homepage design makes it obvious which page elements are clickable, i.e., can take the user to a new page or another segment of the homepage. 

  Here are several must-know homepage design tips for better on-page navigation : 

  • Use colour and underline or bold to highlight clickable words. Alternatively, you can change the browser cursor from a standard arrow into another element (e.g., a larger dot or a pointy finger) to indicate when the cursor hovers over a clickable website area. 
  • Make descriptive button texts that imply what will happen when a user clicks the page. Instead of using abstract and generic button texts like “see more” or “learn more”, try a more vibrant language like “dive in” for clicking through to a spa page. 
  • Use a unified hover area to show how different homepage design elements represent a single path or multiple navigation paths. When multiple items are encapsulated in one visual element (e.g., a box), users may be reluctant to click the image because they aren’t sure if it’s one large hit area leading to a single page or if there are multiple hit areas, leading to different pages. 

  Homepage of BEAUSiTE — a whimsical hotel in the Swiss Alps – embodies all of the above design principles. They change the cursor style whenever you scroll into a hit area, use emotive and creative micro-copy for all button texts and clearly distinguish between different homepage elements.

  

  How to Make Your Homepage Design Even More Impactful ? 

  Website homepage design is roughly 20% of pure design work and 80% of behind-the-scenes research. 

  To design a high-performing homepage you need to have data-backed answers to the following questions : 

  • Who are your primary and secondary target audiences ? 
  • Which tasks (1 to 4) you’d want to help them solve through your homepage ?

  You can get the answers to both questions from your web analytics data by using audience segmentation and page transition (behaviour flow) reports in Matomo. 

  Based on these, you can determine common user journeys and tasks people look to accomplish when visiting your website. Next, you can collect even more data with UBA tools  like heatmaps and user session recordings. Then translated the observed patterns into working homepage design ideas. 

  Improve your homepage design and conversion rates with Matomo. Start your free 21-day trial now ! 

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• How to Check Website Traffic : A Complete Guide

  26 février, par Daniel Crough — Analytics Tips, Marketing

  If you want to learn about the health of your website and the success of your digital marketing initiatives, there are few better ways than checking your website traffic.

  Checking website traffic is a great way to get a dopamine hit when things are up. And it’s a great way to troubleshoot problems when things go down. It’s also a critical data source for marketing and web teams. But to get the most out of it, you need reliable data sources, the ability to track them over time and a way to monitor the competition.

  This article explains how to check website traffic (for your site and your competitors), explores nine tools that can help and discusses why some methods are better than others.

  Why check website traffic ?

  Dopamine hits aside, monitoring website traffic is crucial to a business — even for a primarily brick-and-mortar operation. In this internet age, customers and prospects are far more likely to research a company online before buying anything.

  SOCi’s 2024 Consumer Behavior Index found that 8 in 10 US consumers use the internet to search for local businesses at least once a week. And Statista found that 55% of UK shoppers always do some online research before making a major purchase.

  And trend lines suggest these numbers are likely to continue climbing. Businesses need to know what’s happening on their sites, and that’s difficult to achieve without traffic data.

  Indeed, website data allows companies to better understand their target audiences, measure the effectiveness of marketing efforts and channels, and identify areas of the website that need work.

  Let’s dig into those ideas in a little more detail.

  

  Benchmark site performance

  Keeping regular tabs on traffic levels is a great way to track a website’s performance over time. It can help with planning for the future and identifying current problems.

  For instance, rising traffic levels may mean expanding the business’s offering or investing in more inventory. On the flip side, decreasing traffic levels may suggest it’s time to revamp marketing strategies or look into issues impacting SEO.

  Analyse user behaviour

  Checking website traffic, user behaviour, and other metrics shows marketing managers how users interact with the website. These traffic stats can help answer questions like :

  • Which pages are users visiting ?
  • Which CTAs are they clicking on ?
  • Which page elements encourage users to take the desired actions ?

  It can also identify issues contributing to high bounce rates or declines in search rankings.

  The better user behaviour is understood, the easier it is to give visitors what they want. For example, the data could reveal that users spend more time on landing pages than blogs. These valuable insights can be used to optimise blog content and improve performance.

  Improve the user experience

  Once user behaviour is well understood, it’s easier to make adjustments, update content and improve the overall user experience. This also allows companies to create more personalised customer experiences, which can lead to growth. Research shows companies that get personalisation right generate 40% more revenue from those activities than average players.

  That could take the form of sweeping changes like rearranging a website’s navigation bar based on user behaviour. It could also be personalisation that uses analytics to transform sections or entire pages based on individual user behaviour.

  Optimise digital marketing strategies

  Knowing current traffic levels and how they trend over time helps teams set benchmarks and prioritise marketing efforts.

  Monthly traffic reports can inform SEO efforts and benefit marketing attribution. For example, they could indicate when the time is right to double down on organic traffic or when the better strategy would be to invest more in PPC advertising.

  Increasing organic traffic levels from other countries can help businesses identify new marketing opportunities. If traffic levels from a neighbouring country or a growing market increase significantly, it could be time for a cross-border campaign.

  Filter unwanted traffic

  A significant chunk of every website’s traffic comes from bots and other unwanted sources. This can compromise the quality of website data and make it harder to draw useful insights. While it’s nearly impossible to get rid of this traffic completely, many analytics tools have features to filter it out of the stats.

  Why check competitors’ website traffic

  Websites are windows into businesses and their strategies. That’s why monitoring traffic and other metrics drawn from competitors is essential.

  There’s a lot to learn from the competition, both good and bad. What competitors do well can be replicated, and learning from the elements they get wrong can help you avoid making the same mistakes.

  • Strategic planning : Looking at traffic on specific pages can offer insight into potential marketing campaigns and highlight gaps in the market that may be worth attacking. Looking at their organic, paid, social and referral traffic levels can highlight opportunities for growth or pinpoint the reasons for success in a particular area.
  • Benchmarking : Looking at website traffic in isolation can lack context. Monitoring other sites’ engagement metrics, like bounce rate and average session duration, can give you an inside look at the competition, which can help you set realistic performance goals and benchmarks.
  • Product Development : Significant traffic volume on certain pages can indicate shifts in demand and market trends, which may inform the development of new products or services. For example, if a competitive dog food supplier ranks well for the term “organic dog food”, that might be something to consider when formulating new products.
  • Audience demographics : Comparing audience demographics between competitors can highlight opportunities and help a business narrow down its target audience. This guides messaging and campaign strategies to capture specific audience segments.
  • Keyword opportunities : Examining the keywords driving the most traffic to a competitor’s website can help you uncover untapped SEO potential for your website. Analysing top-performing content on competing sites can help identify content improvement strategies to pull traffic away from competitors.
  • Partnerships : Referrals are an often overlooked traffic metric. High volumes of such traffic indicate successful partnerships between competitors and third parties, which is a model worth emulating.

  7 key website traffic metrics to track

  Traffic metrics are not a case of one-size-fits-all. Those that are important today may not be tomorrow. It all depends on the priorities and goals at any one moment. That said, there are a few traffic metrics that always matter to some degree.

  • New visitors : These are users who have never visited the website before. They are a great sign that marketing efforts are working and the website is reaching more people. But it’s also important to track how they behave on the website to ensure the site caters effectively to the needs of new visitors.
  • Returning visitors : Returning visitors are coming back to the website for a reason : either they like the content they find or want to buy something. Either way, it’s excellent news. The more returning visitors, the better.
  • Bounce rate : This measures how many users leave the website without taking action. Different analytics tools measure this metric differently.
  • Session duration : This is the time users spend on the website, which can reveal whether they find the site engaging. And when considered alongside the next metric, it can be especially insightful.
  • Pages per session : This measures the average number of pages users visit on a website. The more pages they visit and the longer users spend on the website, the more engaging it is.
  • Traffic source : Traffic can come from various sources (organic, direct, social media, referral, etc.). Knowing the highest sources of referral traffic can help analyse and prioritise marketing efforts.
  • User demographics : This shows who visits a website, what device they use, what country they come from, etc. While most website traffic will come from the countries targeted by marketing, an influx of new users from other countries can open the door to new opportunities.

  9 tools to check website traffic

  There are thousands of different web analytics tools that can provide decent website traffic analysis and functionality checks. They all use a similar combination of sophisticated algorithms, data collection techniques, statistical analysis and machine learning to deliver insights into visitor behaviour and site performance.

  Most web analytics tools work by embedding bits of JavaScript or other tracking codes into a website. When users land on a website, it gathers data such as page views, session duration, and specific interactions. Many also use cookies to identify returning visitors, which lets them monitor user behaviour over time.

  Many tools offer advanced event-tracking functionality. This captures specific actions, like clicks or form submissions, and provides a more granular view of engagement. The data is then statistically analysed to spot trends and calculate key metrics like bounce rates and conversion rates.

  Some web analytics tools use machine learning to predict future user behaviour based on historical patterns. Others aggregate data to provide insights via charts comparing website performance with selected competitors’ websites.

  This section explores nine popular tools for checking website traffic and highlights their unique features and benefits.

  1. Checking website traffic with Google Analytics

  Google Analytics is usually the first place to start for anyone looking to check their website traffic. It’s free to use, incredibly popular and offers a wide range of traffic reports.

  It breaks down historical traffic data in many different ways. It can split traffic by acquisition channel (organic, social media, direct, etc.), by country, device or demographic. It also provides real-time traffic reports that offer a snapshot of users on the site right now and over the last 30 minutes.

  

  Google Analytics may be one of the most popular ways to check website traffic, but it could be better. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is difficult to use compared to its predecessor, and it also imposes data tracking limits in accordance with privacy laws. If users refuse cookie consent, Google Analytics won’t record those visits. In other words, using Google Analytics alone doesn’t provide a complete view of the traffic.

  

  Also, GA4 relies on sampling when processing large datasets or complex queries. When the volume of data exceeds certain thresholds, it only considers a subset of the data to generate reports instead of processing every single data point.

  There are pros and cons to this approach. While it speeds up analysis and reduces the load on the system, it can also lead to inaccuracies in insights delivered. When analysing traffic patterns over a busy period, GA4 may only use a portion of the data to calculate and then extrapolate metrics.

  As a result, trends or anomalies might be overlooked or misconstrued, which could mean missed opportunities or poor decisions. That’s why it’s important to use Google Analytics alongside other web analytics tools (like Matomo) that don’t suffer from the same privacy issues. That way, it’s possible to track every single user who visits the website.

  2. Checking website traffic with Google Search Console

  Google Search Console is a free tool that analyses a website’s Google search traffic. The top-line report shows how many times the website has appeared in Google Search, how many clicks it has received, the average clickthrough rate and its average position in the search results.

  

  It’s a great way to understand what the website ranks for and how much traffic organic rankings generate. It will also show which pages are indexed in Google and whether there are any crawling errors.

  Unfortunately, Google Search Console is limited if a complete view of traffic is needed. While the search traffic can be analysed in great detail, it will not report how users who access the website behave on it.

  3. Checking website traffic with Similarweb

  Similarweb is a website analysis tool that estimates the total traffic of any site on the internet. It is one of the best traffic checker tools for estimating how much web traffic competitors receive.

  What’s great about Similarweb is that it estimates total traffic, not just traffic from search engines like many SEO tools. It even breaks down traffic by different channels for easy comparison.

  

  Similarweb provides an estimate of total visits, bounce rate, the average number of pages users view per visit and the average duration on the site. The company also has a free browser extension that continues checking website traffic estimates while the user is browsing the web.

  Similarweb is free to use, up to a point. However, to get the most out of this tool, you must upgrade to the premium plan, which starts at $125 per user per month.

  The price isn’t Similarweb’s only downside. Ultimately, it provides reasonably accurate estimates but is no match for a comprehensive traffic analytics tool.

  4. Checking website traffic with Semrush

  Semrush is a collection of marketing solutions for online businesses. Its Traffic Analytics tool checks the website traffic of up to 100 sites and compares that data side-by-side. For each site, it reveals the top pages, the regions from which most of the traffic comes, and the locations from which the most referrals come.

  Semrush also gathers insights into competitors’ audiences and their activity, especially activity that overlaps between the sites being checked. It extracts and analyses comprehensive data on organic and paid search, social media, and backlinks.

  

  However, there are notable downsides. Semrush can be pricey, with plans starting at about $119.95 per month or $1,199.40 annually. This cost may be prohibitive for smaller businesses or freelancers. Still, a free version offers most of the functionality but with a limited number of daily reports.

  5. Checking website traffic with Ahrefs

  Ahrefs‘s biggest strength is its organic traffic estimation capabilities. It estimates monthly visits from Google worldwide, Google keywords in the top 100 that a website ranks for, and traffic value via equivalence to PPC.

  

  Ahrefs bases its estimates on ranking data from a database of 12 billion keywords, which is why it is so powerful. It generates a detailed report that includes organic traffic estimates, backlink data, and top-performing keywords.

  However, the numbers produced by Ahrefs are estimates based on the available data and won’t always be 100% accurate. This is particularly true for smaller or newer websites that lack the data volumes needed for accuracy.

  It’s a great SEO marketing tool that’s free to use within certain limits, but there is some value in registering for a paid plan. There are several options, beginning with the $129 per month Lite plan and extending to the Enterprise Plan for $1,499 monthly.

  6. Checking website traffic with Serpstat

  Serpstat is an SEO solution that grew from a simple keyword research tool. It offers more comprehensive features to help businesses understand their website’s performance. It helps improve a site’s visibility through tools for rank tracking, keyword research, traffic checking, backlink analysis, and site auditing.

  

  It provides metrics like estimated monthly visits, traffic sources (organic, paid, and referral), and insights into top-performing pages. Serpstat also offers competitor analysis features that help to identify market trends and refine growth strategies. However, like Ahrefs, the numbers provided are estimates, which are only as good as the depth of data from which they are derived.

  The free version is fine for basic analysis, but signing up for one of the paid plans is advisable for commercial use. Pricing ranges from $59 per month to a monthly fee of $479 for the Agency plan. There is an option to pay annually at a discount.

  7. Checking website traffic with SEO PowerSuite

  SEO PowerSuite also goes some distance beyond just website traffic checking. As the name implies, it’s a suite of tools to improve website rankings.

  

  There are four tools in the suite :

  • Rank Tracker enables tracking a website’s search engine rankings across multiple keywords and search engines.
  • WebSite Auditor offers SEO analysis of website pages and recommends actions to boost performance.
  • SEO SpyGlass analyses a website’s backlink profile to highlight link-building possibilities that’d help improve performance.
  • LinkAssistant helps identify websites suitable for link-building and recommends viable outreach opportunities.

  SEO PowerSuite has a free plan and two premium plans with varying functionality. The monthly cost could be as much as $139.67, depending on the features needed. Annual pricing options are also available.

  8. Checking website traffic with Ubersuggest

  Ubersuggest is also an SEO-focused tool. It offers website traffic analysis, keyword rankings, backlink profiles, and competitor insights. These are packaged in reports that provide an overview of website traffic, including monthly organic traffic totals and the number of organic keywords the site ranks for. Ubersuggest also offers content suggestions.

  

  Like other tools in this category, Ubersuggest doesn’t collect comprehensive data, so its numbers are estimates. This means the accuracy can vary. However, it remains a solid choice for providing great insights and enhancing a website’s online presence.

  Like many tools in this category, there is a free version to give potential customers a taste, which is restricted by volume more than features. The paid plans range from around $29 per month for one website on the individual plan to about $99 per month for 8-15 websites on the Enterprise plan. Discounted annual pricing is also an option.

  9. Checking website traffic with MonsterInsights

  MonsterInsights is a tool worth considering for websites built on WordPress because it’s not a website checking tool in the usual sense. It’s a WordPress plugin that simplifies the task by integrating Google Analytics directly into a website.

  MonsterInsights then uses the raw data provided by GA4 to extract actionable insights based on audience preferences and activity. This makes it easier to focus on the relevant metrics for different types of websites. For example, the metrics used to measure a blog site would not be the same as those for an ecommerce site.

  But there are some downsides, too. While the basic version is free, it has limited features, and the most potent functionality requires a premium subscription. Those start at $249 per year for a single site, or the Pro plan at $499 for up to five sites. Agencies looking to work with up to 25 sites are in for $999.

  

  There’s another option

  Although many of these tools have free versions, those tend to be heavily restricted, and premium plans can be expensive. A website has to generate serious revenue to deliver a decent return on investment (ROI) to justify the costs.

  As more countries adopt GDPR-like privacy regulations, brands must ensure they’re using compliant, privacy-centric analytics tools.

  Matomo Analytics is one such tool. It’s an ethical, open-source solution that helps you collect accurate data about your website’s traffic and make more informed decisions. This enhances the customer experience and ensures GDPR compliance and user privacy.

  It’s completely free to install as an on-premise solution. Alternatively, there’s the subscription-based Matomo Cloud version.

  How to check website traffic on Matomo

  Apart from a better ROI picture, Matomo offers a more reliable assessment of your website’s traffic than Google Analytics 4. It also provides multiple ways to check organic search traffic :

  • Visits log report
  • Real-time visitor map
  • Visits in real-time report

  Let’s look at all of them one by one.

  The visits log report is a unique rundown of your site’s visitors. It offers a much more granular view than other traffic checker tools, which only show the total number of visitors for a given period.

  

  You can access the visits log report by clicking on the reporting menu and then clicking Visitor and Visits Log. From there, you’ll be able to scroll through every user session and see the following information :

  • The location of the user
  • The total number of actions they took
  • The length of time on site
  • How they arrived at your site
  • The device they used to access your site

  It may be overwhelming if your site receives thousands of visitors at a time. But it’s a great way to understand users at an individual level and appreciate the lifetime activity of specific users.

  The Real-time visitor map shows site visitors’ location for a given timeframe. If you have an international website, it’s a fantastic way to see exactly where your traffic comes from.

  

  You can access the Real-time Visitor Map by clicking Visitor in the main navigation menu and then Real-time Map. The map itself is colour-coded. Larger orange bubbles represent recent visits, and smaller dark orange and grey bubbles represent older visits. The map will refresh every five seconds, and new users appear with a flashing effect.

  If you run TV or radio adverts, Matomo’s Real-time Map provides an immediate read on the effectiveness of your campaign. If your map lights up in the minutes following your ad, you know it’s been effective. It can also help you identify the source of bot attacks, too.

  Finally, the Visits in Real-time report provides a snapshot of who is browsing your website. You can access this report under Visitors > Real-time and add it to your custom dashboards as a widget.

  Open the report, and you’ll see the real-time flow of your site’s users and counters for visits and pageviews over the last 30 minutes and 24 hours. The report refreshes every five seconds with new users added to the top of the report with a fade-in effect.

  

  The report provides a snapshot of each visitor, including :

  • Whether they are new or returning
  • Their country
  • Their browser
  • Their operating system
  • The number of actions they took
  • The time they spent on the site
  • The channel they came in from
  • Whether the visitor converted a goal

  Why do my traffic reports differ ?

  If you use more than one of the methods above to check your website traffic, you’ll quickly realise that every traffic report differs. In some cases, the reasons are obvious. Any tool that estimates your traffic without adding code to your website is just that : an estimate. Tools like many of those mentioned here will never offer the accuracy of analytics platforms like Matomo and Google Analytics.

  But what about the differences between these analytics platforms themselves ? While each platform records user behaviour differently, significant differences in website traffic reports between analytics platforms are usually due to how each platform handles user privacy.

  A platform like Google Analytics requires users to accept a cookie consent banner to track them. If they accept, great. Google collects all of the data that any other analytics platform does. It may even collect more. However, if users reject cookie consent banners, Google Analytics can’t track them. They simply won’t show up in your traffic reports.

  That doesn’t happen with all analytics platforms, however. A privacy-focused alternative like Matomo doesn’t require cookie consent banners (apart from in the United Kingdom and Germany). Therefore, it can continue to track visitors even after they have rejected a cookie consent screen from Google Analytics. This means virtually all website traffic will be tracked regardless of whether users accept a cookie consent banner. And it’s why traffic reports in Matomo are often much higher than in Google Analytics.

  

  Around half (47.32%) of adults in the European Union refuse to allow personal data tracking for advertising purposes, and 95% of people will reject additional cookies when it is easy to do so. So relying on cookies limits your results — and causes you to miss out on valuable user data.

  If you’re serious about using web analytics to improve your website and optimise your marketing campaigns, then it is essential to use another analytics platform alongside Google Analytics.

  What to do if website traffic levels drop

  Experiencing a drop in website traffic can be frustrating, but it happens to everyone at some point. Here’s how to address it :

  • Analyse traffic sources : Use analytics tools to pinpoint where the decline is coming from—organic search, referrals, or social media.
  • Check for technical issues : Look for broken links or slow loading times, which can deter visitors. Tools like Google Search Console can help identify errors.
  • Review recent changes : Consider any recent updates to the website. If something coincided with the drop, it might be worth reverting.
  • Evaluate content quality : Ensure the content is engaging and relevant. Update or improve underperforming posts.
  • Reassess the marketing strategy : The only constant in marketing is change. It’s wise to periodically revisit the balance between paid ads, social media and other vectors to evaluate their effectiveness and adjust the approach.

  It’s perfectly normal for website traffic volumes to fluctuate. Expect it and work with the available tools. Persistence will likely see the traffic volumes rebound.

  Get more accurate traffic reports with Matomo

  There are several methods to check website traffic. Some can provide estimates on your competitors’ traffic levels. Others, like Google Analytics, are free. But data doesn’t lie. Only privacy-focused analytics solutions like Matomo can provide accurate reports that account for every visitor.

  Join over one million organisations using Matomo to check their website traffic accurately and ethically.

  Try Matomo for Free

  Start your 21-day free trial — no credit card required.

• Nexus One

  19 mars 2010, par Mans — Uncategorized

  I have had a Nexus One for about a week (thanks Google), and naturally I have an opinion or two about it.
  

  Hardware

  With the front side dominated by a touch-screen and a lone, round button, the Nexus One appearance is similar to that of most contemporary smartphones. The reverse sports a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, a Google logo, and a smaller HTC logo. Power button, volume control, and headphone and micro-USB sockets are found along the edges. It is with appreciation I note the lack of a front-facing camera ; the silly idea of video calls is finally put to rest.

  Powering up the phone (I’m beginning to question the applicability of that word), I am immediately enamoured with the display. At 800×480 pixels, the AMOLED display is crystal-clear and easily viewable even in bright light. In a darker environment, the display automatically dims. The display does have one quirk in that the subpixel pattern doesn’t actually have a full RGB triplet for each pixel. The close-up photo below shows the pattern seen when displaying a solid white colour.

  

  The result of this is that fine vertical lines, particularly red or blue ones, look a bit jagged. Most of the time this is not much of a problem, and I find it an acceptable compromise for the higher effective resolution it provides.

  Basic interaction

  The Android system is by now familiar, and the Nexus offers no surprises in basic usage. All the usual applications come pre-installed : browser, email, calendar, contacts, maps, and even voice calls. Many of the applications integrate with a Google account, which is nice. Calendar entries, map placemarks, etc. are automatically shared between desktop and mobile. Gone is the need for the bug-ridden custom synchronisation software with which mobile phones of the past were plagued.

  Launching applications is mostly speedy, and recently used apps are kept loaded as long as memory needs allow. Although this garbage-collection-style of application management, where you are never quite sure whether an app is still running, takes a few moments of acclimatisation, it works reasonably well in day to day use. Most of the applications are well-behaved and save their data before terminating.

  Email

  Two email applications are included out of the box : one generic and one Gmail-only. As I do not use Gmail, I cannot comment on this application. The generic email client supports IMAP, but is rather limited in functionality. Fortunately, a much-enhanced version, K-9, is available for download. The main feature I find lacking here is threaded message view.

  The features, or lack thereof, in the email applications is not, however, of huge importance, as composing email, or any longer piece of text, is something one rather avoids on a system like this. The on-screen keyboard, while falling among the better of its kind, is still slow to use. Lack of tactile feedback means accidentally tapping the wrong key is easily done, and entering numbers or punctuation is an outright chore.

  Browser

  Whatever the Nexus lacks in email abilities, it makes up for with the browser. Surfing the web on a phone has never been this pleasant. Page rendering is quick, and zooming is fast and simple. Even pages not designed for mobile viewing are easy to read with smart reformatting almost entirely eliminating the sideways scrolling which hampered many a mobile browser of old.

  Calls and messaging

  Being a phone, the Nexus One is obviously able to make and receive calls, and it does so with ease. Entering a number or locating a stored contact are both straight-forward operations. During a call, audio is clear and of adequate loudness, although I have yet to use the phone in really noisy surroundings.

  The other traditional task of a mobile phone, messaging, is also well-supported. There isn’t really much to say about this.

  Multimedia

  Having a bit of an interest in most things multimedia, I obviously tested the capabilities of the Nexus by throwing some assorted samples at it, revealing ample space for improvement. With video limited to H.264 and MPEG4, and the only supported audio codecs being AAC, MP3, Vorbis, and AMR, there are many files which will not play.

  To make matters worse, only selected combinations of audio and video will play together. Several video files I tested played without sound, yet when presented with the very same audio data alone, it was correctly decoded. As for container formats, it appears restricted to MP4/MOV, and Ogg (for Vorbis). AVI files are recognised as media files, but I was unable to find an AVI file which would play.

  With a device clearly capable of so much more, the poor multimedia support is nothing short of embarrassing.

  The Market

  Much of the hype surrounding Android revolves around the Market, Google’s virtual marketplace for app authors to sell or give away their creations. The thousands of available applications are broadly categorised, and a search function is available.

  The categorised lists are divided into free and paid sections, while search results, disappointingly, are not. To aid the decision, ratings and comments are displayed alongside the summary and screenshots of each application. Overall, the process of finding and installing an application is mostly painless. While it could certainly be improved, it could also have been much worse.

  The applications themselves are, as hinted above, beyond numerous. Sadly, quality does not quite match up to quantity. The vast majority of the apps are pointless, though occasionally mildly amusing, gimmicks of no practical value. The really good ones, and they do exist, are very hard to find unless one knows precisely what to look for.

  Battery

  Packing great performance into a pocket-size device comes with a price in battery life. The battery in the Nexus lasts considerably shorter time than that in my older, less feature-packed Nokia phone. To some extent this is probably a result of me actually using it a lot more, yet the end result is the same : more frequent recharging. I should probably get used to the idea of recharging the phone every other night.

  Verdict

  The Nexus One is a capable hardware platform running an OS with plenty of potential. The applications are still somewhat lacking (or very hard to find), although the basic features work reasonably well. Hopefully future Android updates will see more and better core applications integrated, and I imagine that over time, I will find third-party apps to solve my problems in a way I like. I am not putting this phone on the shelf just yet.