Track Facebook traffic

Facebook has a large user base and a high reach. This why businesses still market their products and services on the platform.

By publishing content and running Facebook advertisements, you can draw more traffic to your website, resulting in more sales, leads, and conversions.

But how can you know what and how much traffic your website receives from Facebook? Don't worry; by tracking your Facebook traffic, you can quickly gain insights that will help you better understand your audience and drive more visitors to your website.

Let's go through why tracking your Facebook traffic is important and how you can track it using simple analytics.

1. Why is tracking Facebook traffic important?
2. How does Simple Analytics track traffic from Facebook?
3. Steps to Track Traffic from Facebook Using Simple Analytics
   1. Install the Script
   2. Let the Data Flow In
   3. Set Up a Goal to Track Facebook Traffic
4. Conclusion

Why is tracking Facebook traffic important?

Tracking Facebook traffic allows you to better understand your audience by determining where they are coming from, how much time they spend there and which pages they visit. With this you can start learning about their online behaviours. You can gain insights into your present and potential audiences, as well as discover their browsing and purchasing behaviours.

You can also evaluate the effectiveness of campaigns and track conversions from your ads to see whether they are worth it and optimise them accordingly.

Knowing your audience and how they interact with your content on Facebook allows you to retarget potential customers. This will help you to generate more traffic to your websites and increase sales.

How does Simple Analytics track traffic from Facebook?

Simple Analytics is a privacy-friendly web analytics tool which tracks all possible data and metrics related to your website traffic.

Once you add the Simple Analytics script to your website, it starts collecting important metrics related to your visitors' interactions.

For a complete list of tracked metrics, you can refer to the documentation page.

To track traffic from Facebook effectively, Simple Analytics uses the referrer hostname.

Steps to Track Traffic from Facebook Using Simple Analytics

Now that you understand the importance of tracking traffic and how Simple Analytics does it, let's walk through the steps to set it up for your website:

Install the Script

Start by creating your account on Simple Analytics (if you haven't done this already). This will prompt you to add your website and install the script onto your website.

This is really easy and works the same as if you would add Google Analytics to your websites. The script enables Simple Analytics to start tracking page views on your website.

Let the Data Flow In

After you've installed the Simple Analytics script, you'll need to be patient and give it some time to gather data. The script will start collecting information as visitors come to your website from Facebook.

Set Up a Goal to Track Facebook Traffic

Now that you have some traffic flowing into your website, it's time to create a goal to track traffic coming from Facebook. Follow these steps to set up the goal:

1. Log in to your Simple Analytics dashboard.
2. Navigate to the “Goals” section.
3. Click on “Create Goal” or “Add New Goal.”
4. Give your goal a descriptive name, like “Traffic from Facebook.”
5. Choose the “pageview” event from the list of available events.
6. Under the filter options, select “Referrer hostname – is – Facebook” to track traffic specifically from Facebook.
7. Save the Goal.

Once you've set up the Goal, consider marking it as “important” to have it appear on your visitor dashboard for easy monitoring.

Conclusion

Tracking Facebook traffic is important for learning more about your audience and tailoring your marketing plan to match your business's objectives, and Simple Analytics can help you with this.

Following the steps outlined above, you can quickly begin tracking your Facebook traffic and gain insight to make informed decisions about your business and website performance.

At Simple Analytics we believe in an independent internet that is friendly to website visitors. If this resonates with you, feel free to give us a try!