All Bandzoogle plans provide detailed fan data. The ‘Reports’ tab is available for you to gain valuable data on your site visitors. Before reading this article, we recommend reading the ‘Using the Reports Tab’ help article. Once you have an understanding of the terms and layout, the tips provided below will help you make the most out of the statistics supplied in the ‘Reports’ tab.

Getting Started

Create a plan before you dive in. It’s best to start by writing down some goals. Choose a target number for the year for each category in the reports tab: visitors, fans, plays, sales, and conversions. Then work backwards to dissect your goals by quarter, month, and week. The numbers should be attainable, but should stretch a bit past your comfort zone to make you reach for them. Then use the following checklists to stay on track.

Data Tracking

When looking at your stats, use the following checklist. This will minimize the time spent on data tracking while maximizing your promotion efforts. If you’re getting the results you want, repeat the same promotion tactics, or increase your goals. If you aren’t getting the results you want check these bullet lists for tips:

Visitors

How many unique visitors came to our website?

[Unique Visitors: A unique visitor is someone visiting from an IP address that hasn’t visited your website within a specified time frame.]

  • Get more people to visit your website by using teasers on your social media accounts.
    • Example: Allow them to listen to a snippet of your latest song and draw them to your website to hear the full track.

Where are my visitors located?

  • In the ‘visitor locations’ section you can see both a heatmap and a list of details on your site visitors’ locations. This gives you an idea of where most of your fans are located, so you can set up gigs in that area. If you are trying to develop your fan base in another area, you can focus your marketing to people in that location.
    • Example: Boost Facebook posts in specific areas, comment on forums and blogs about those areas, work with venues and businesses in that area to become better known.

Which pages are most popular with my site visitors?

  • Use summary posts on your website’s homepage to direct visitors to more content on other pages
    • Example: Add a few blog posts and have a ‘see more’ link to direct fans to your blog page for more articles.
  • If a page consistently doesn’t receive views, consider unpublishing that page. You can also sprinkle content from that page onto other pages.

    Tip: It’s best to limit your menu to 8 menu tabs or less. Anything more is usually frustrating for fans to navigate through.

Which websites led visitors to my website?

  • This section will give you an idea of the promotion efforts that are working best. The ‘Top Sources’ section will tell you what website the visitor was on when they clicked to get to your website.
    • Example: Google, YouTube, Facebook, a venue website, another band website who you collaborate with, etc. This is why it’s important to try to get your website link on as many external websites as possible. It’s great for SEO (search engine optimization).

Which search terms led fans to my website? (Google Analytics only)

  • These are the keywords or phrases a person used to find your website.
    • Sometimes a fan specifically looks for you with these keywords. It may be your name, one of your song titles, or other distinguishing keywords for your music.
    • Other times a person may be doing a Google search for a keyword or phrase and one of your website pages shows up in search engine results. When they click the link and are directed to your website that search term shows up in this section of the reports tab.

      Tip: Use appropriate keywords and phrases throughout your website pages. That is what search engines like Google and Bing will use in search engine results.

What actions did visitors take when on a specific page of my site? (Google Analytics only)

  • In the ‘Page Stats’ section, you can see the number of unique visitors, total number of visits, bounce rate, and conversions for any page of your website.

[Conversions: The total number of sales, mailing list sign ups, free downloads, and plays on your website for the selected date range]

  • Use these stats in conjunction with a music marketing campaign to track how well you were able to drive traffic to a specific page.
    • Example: Create a landing page for your new album and promote it on your social media profiles, directing visitors to that specific page featuring the album for sale. Use the ‘Page Stats” to track the effectiveness of your campaign by seeing how many visitors you attracted, how long they stayed on the page, and how many of them bought the album.

For more information on SEO (Search Engine Optimization), please download our [Free eBook] A Complete Guide to SEO for Musicians

Fans

How many new mailing list members have been added?

  • It’s best to add new members often. Using the annual goals you set, check that you are gaining new fans consistently. If not, focus on bumping up your promotion efforts.

Is my fan base growing?

  • Make sure you are not only adding new members, but also not losing current members. If you see a dip in your fan growth, consider changing your email campaign format, or send a survey to current fans on what they’d like to hear about most.

    Tip: Offer a free download in exchange for mailing list sign up. This encourages people to get on your list.

Have I been sending email campaigns consistently?

  • This is the best way to stay in direct contact with fans. You can let them know about your latest music releases, upcoming gigs, and new photo uploads. To hold the attention of your fans you can even include info about other things happening in your music genre. Anything that will bring value to your fans will be what keeps them opening your email.

    Tip: Plan to send one email campaign per week. This will keep your name in the minds of your fans and let them know you are active in the music scene.

Plays

Which of my tracks/albums are most popular?

  • This is where you can determine whether certain tracks are popular because you promoted them more heavily, or whether fans simply enjoyed those songs more. A good indicator is the download number. If a lot of people listened to a track but didn’t download it, most likely those are the ones that were just heavily marketed. An increase in the download numbers for a song or album is a sign of a hit!

Which songs had the most partial plays or skips? (Google Analytics only)

  • Partial plays and skips don’t necessarily mean visitors didn’t like your tunes. They may just be in a hurry and want to quickly hear what each song sounds like while visiting your site. That said, it is possible that some songs just aren’t resonating with fans. This is where fan feedback is important. When the fans have spoken, write new songs in the same style as the previous ones they really enjoy.

    Tip: Use a poll feature on your website or a social media platform asking fans to rate new releases.

Where are my fans located?

  • This is similar to the ‘locations’ section of the ‘Visitors’ tab. This map, however, takes it a step further by showing you which fans took the time to press play to actually listen to the music posted on your site. This is a more solid indicator of who’s really interested in your music.

Sales

Which items sold the most/least?

  • Selling merch and other digital files is a great way to make extra income. Many musicians sell t-shirts, hats, and stickers through their website store. You can also sell things like sheet music, ebooks, and video lessons. Track sales consistently to see which items are most popular with your fans. For example, if your t-shirts are your best seller, consider adding new styles or colors. With our Store feature you can easily set up items in different colors and sizes.

Are there certain days/months that showed better sales?

  • If you notice a spike in sales, take a look at the dates and see if there’s a pattern. If there are a lot of sales on a particular date, try to correlate that to any recent online promotions or features you were part of. If there’s a large amount of sales in one month, check to see if you are also adding new mailing list members. It may very well mean you’re growing organically and your promotion efforts are paying off!

    Tip: If you don’t have any spikes, consider putting items on sale for a short period of time to encourage people to purchase items.

Did I reach my sales goals?

  • Without setting a target number as a goal, you’ll be promoting your music aimlessly. Once you set your annual goal, break that up into monthly and weekly goals. As you check the reported data periodically, you’ll see whether or not goals are being met. Set aside time each month to write down what is and isn’t working. Then brainstorm goals you can set in place to meet or exceed your objectives.

Other Considerations

Annually

At the end of each year, take time to analyze your results. Annual data tracking should be used to see what did and didn’t work during the previous year. This will help to determine the focus for the upcoming year. Where you were successful, keep doing those things. Where you fell short, brainstorm ideas on what to try next.

Daily

We strongly suggest you avoid the trap of checking your visitor or song play stats on an hourly or daily basis. Instead, use the aggregated data on a weekly or monthly basis to capture trends and use them to your advantage.

Exceptions:

  • Sales: Flash sales that are only available on the same day. [Example: 50% our latest album, today only]
  • Fans: Quick promotion efforts that are time sensitive to the same day. [Example: Get our new track on our website in exchange for your email address, today only!]

Note: Daily statistics shift because bogus traffic (like spam bots) get filtered on a schedule throughout the day. A best practice is to check your stats for a given day on the following day, once all data has been processed. If you still are compelled to check daily or hourly visitor stats you can do this directly through your Google Analytics.