How to use Squarespace analytics to better understand your website's audience

If you have a website, you probably (hopefully?) have an audience.

But how well do you know them? Who visits your site, how do they interact with it, and how can you use that information to support your website growth and online business?

Understanding your audience is the biggest component of marketing your website and/or online business. If you don't know your audience, you're going to have a really hard time connecting with them and converting them into clients (if that's your goal).

There are several ways to draw insights about your website's audience and if you website is on Squarespace, the process couldn't be easier. With Squarespace Analytics, you can:

find out who's visiting your site and why
gather insights that will help you target your audience effectively
anticipate your audience's needs
improve your user experience through intentional web design
convert your audience into customers

NOTE: I've written about everything you need to know about Squarespace Analytics but if you haven't checked out that post already, I suggest you spend some time familiarizing yourself with the tool. Once you know what we're talking about, the instructions in this article will make a lot more sense!

To make this article even more actionable, I created a FREE Audience Analysis and Evaluation worksheet that will show you how to use Squarespace Analytics audience insights to improve your website. This worksheet will take the theoretical information covered in this article and show you how you can apply it to your own website. Simply enter your email below and you'll get the worksheet delivered straight to your inbox.

Use Squarespace Analytics to understand your audience and improve your website

Get the free worksheet today and see what Squarespace Analytics can teach you about your website's audience!

There are three key insights Squarespace Analytics displays that will help you to better understand your website's audience

Referers
Device Usage
Popular Content

We're going to dig into each one to see what that information means and why it's useful. Our goal here is to apply those insights to growing your website and to strengthen your relationship with your online community.

Let's begin.

Referers

The first step to understanding your audience is figuring out how visitors are finding your website. Knowing how people are arriving on your site is the first thing you should evaluate, especially if you're actively marketing across a number of online platforms.

In Squarespace Analytics, all this information is easily available by logging into your website and selecting Analytics > Referers.

You'll see a pie chart showing the breakdown of referers. Direct means people who type your website's URL directly into a browser. You'll see a list of all the other sources outlined here as well. This will cover social media channels, search engine results, external links, etc.

Here's what Referers can tell you about your audience

This information is powerful because you can instantly see which efforts are effective in attracting people to your website. For example, if most of your traffic comes from social media, you'll want to ramp up your posting schedule and interaction with followers. Digging deeper here, if you see that one social media platform is particularly successful or weak, you can react accordingly. If you spend hours a week on Twitter, for example, but it isn't driving a lot of traffic to your website, you might want to decrease your efforts or change your strategy. On the flip side, if you hardly spend any time on Youtube but you see that it's actually attracting a lot of people to your website, you'll want to focus more on growing this platform.

Evaluating referers is also helpful to see if you online marketing and PR efforts are paying off. Let's say you're doing a lot of guest posts on other websites or industry publications, and you see that they are sending a lot of traffic back to your site. That's a GOOD thing and it shows you that you want to do more of that! On the flip side, if you're spending hours every week trying to secure media mentions to your website/business but they aren't helping you grow, you'll be able to see that. Numbers don't lie.

Device Usage

Squarespace Analytics will also give you a comparison of how users are viewing your website, whether through desktops or mobile devices. To see this information, log into your Squarespace site and go to Analytics > Mobile Usage.

In this analytics section, you'll see what percentage of visitors are viewing your website on a mobile device compared to those who are viewing it from a desktop (or laptop).

Here's what Device Usage can tell you about your audience

This information is incredibly valuable because depending on the audience breakdown, it could have an affect on your website's design. Website design is very closely connected to content and layout so it's important to understand HOW people are viewing your site.

If mobile visitors dominate your audience, you'll want to focus on short, digestible bits of content. Squarespace's Index Pages will come into play here, and you might lean a bit more on video content or simple graphics.

On the flip side, if your audience mostly visits your website from a desktop computer, you have more freedom in your website design and can take a content-heavy approach. If this is the case, you can expand your website content through longer blog posts, links to other resources, in-depth sales pages, etc.

What audience analytics means for your website

Having an audience isn't enough - you have to know them if you want your website to grow and support your business.

There's a lot to consider if you want to get strategic and really help your audience. To begin, think about your actual audience vs. your ideal audience. Are they the same person? How is your website designed with them in mind?

You will also want to look a the pages & posts on your website to see how they can be improved. Is there any redundant content that could be removed?

How content is presented will be one of the biggest factors in your website's success. Think about how content is created and whether it makes sense for your audience? How can it be more targeted? Is the focus on desktop or mobile visitors and how does that impact content moving forward?

Finally, brainstorm ways you can help your audience, especially when it comes to supporting popular content. Have you added email newsletter sign-ups across your website? Could you create video tutorials or content upgrades to make your content stand out even more?

All of these little changes should be done with your audience in mind and as you plan for them, you'll see your website performance improve.

Final Thoughts

Squarespace Analytics is a wonderful way to learn more about your website's audience but it does have some limitations. You should know that while Squarespace Analytics covers a lot, there are important analytics that it does not include. To get the full picture of your website's audience, you should also install Google Analytics. Google Analytics will fill in the gaps on areas like visitor demographics, location, bounce rates, user flows and behaviours, real time stats, etc.

By knowing your audience, you'll be able to better serve them through your website and online efforts. This will help you to grow your website, expand your reach, attract and support new business and existing customers, and so much more. Remember that having a website is about more than just putting content out into the interwebs - it's about understanding and interacting with the actual person who's consuming it.

Don't forget to grab the FREE worksheet below to better understand what Squarespace Analytics can teach you about your website's audience today. That information is valuable and can have a profound impact on your website strategy when you understand what it all means.

Now it's your turn to tell me, who is the audience of your website? Have you ever looked at Squarespace Analytics to learn more about that audience? Were you surprised by the results or was it what you expected to see? Did learning more about your audience impact the way you designed your website or presented content? I'd love to know so leave me a note below in the comments!