How do you know if anyone is looking at your website?
As Mel pointed out, everyone wants to know “how many likes” do you have. Digital technology allows for the quantification of popularity in ways that marketing people (as well as many other types) could only dream of before the internet and social media. One way to find this out is to use Google Analytics on your domain.
But it’s not only vanity – you can find out other things from Google Analytics. You can find out which pages people are using, where they are coming from, and other things (that I have yet to implement). For example, I can see which pages were the most popular, the average length of time that was spent on the page (see the image on the left).
Using WordPress, Drupal, and other CMS programs, it’s relatively easy to use Google Analytics to keep track of traffic on your site. First, log into your Google account through the Google Analytics portal. You first need to set up which site you are tracking, and get your tracking ID. You can then either use a WP plug-in or input the embed code from Google Analytics into all the headers on your site. My theme allows me to put such code that I want on all my pages in one area, as you can see in the image.
Google Analytics explanation from the Beginner’s Guide to WordPress.