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New to the digital marketing space? Let’s introduce you to web analytics, which refers to the measurement and analysis of some key metrics to help you understand and optimise your web performance.
These metrics help you figure out which steps to take next, and they let you see if a newly-launched marketing campaign is working. Note that you’ll have to track them constantly to help you develop a better insight on your website’s performance.
Take a look below to see the most important website metrics you should be tracking.
1. Value per Visit
The value per visit metric helps you understand how much value you’re getting out of every visit. You can get it by dividing the total number of visits by the total value the visit created, but this can be hard to calculate as a value isn’t easy to define.
Blog visitors, for example, create a value when they contribute to the page view, but leaving a comment also creates an intangible value. E-commerce websites can also define a value as when a visitor makes a purchase, but they may also create value when they leave a comment or refer the website to other people.
To keep things simple, you can divide the number of unique visitors by the amount of money that comes in to arrive at an estimated value per visit. You can also assign different values for different pages by determining which landing pages lead to conversions and how the audience arrives at these pages. You can then make changes to your campaign to boost your conversions.
2. Total Site Traffic
Then we have the total number of visits, which pertains to the number of people arriving at any of your pages. You use this metric to calculate other important site metrics, such as the conversion rate, bounce rate, and such.
It also gives you a better picture of how traffic flows into your website at a given timeframe, which you can then use to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. If you have a healthy campaign, you should see a steady growth in the number of your unique visitors. When it starts to drop, it’s a signal that you may have to adjust your campaign.
You can use Google Analytics and other tools to measure website traffic. Use this information to think of ways to drive traffic, but keep in mind that you need high-quality traffic, too.
Remember to check your own sites traffic with that of competitors. You can easily do that with a tool such as Semrush. Even a free plan can reveal good data or you can sign up for a free 7 day trial.
3. Traffic Sources
Another important website metric is the traffic sources, which helps you determine where your visitors are coming from. There are three primary types of sources:
- Direct visitors
- Search visitors
- Referral visitors
Direct visitors are those that visit your business site via typing your URL into the address bar directly. Search visitors are those that find and click your website from the search results. Lastly, referral visitors come from another website.
Evaluate each type to see if your marketing strategies are doing great. For example, an increase in search traffic after publishing new content or implementing a new tactic means that it’s working. However, a traffic source with a high bounce rate means that it’s irrelevant, and so you should revisit your strategy.
4. Conversion Rate
The conversion rate represents how well your marketing strategies are performing. It could represent converting the visitor into a lead by filling up a form or converting them into customers by them making a purchase. It’s pretty easy to calculate: you just divide the number of unique visitors by the number of conversions.
A high overall conversion rate means the website is doing generally good, but it’s a good idea to track how each webpage is performing. Comparing the conversion rate of every page can lead you to better understand which of your strategies are working.
Visit the landing pages with high conversation rates and check what elements are possibly appealing to your audience. Visit the ones with low performance as well, and see how you can update the content, design, and other elements to improve the conversion rate. Then, use Google Analytics to track the changes.
5. Lead Generation Cost
Many know that the conversion rate is one of the most important conversion metrics, but people tend to overlook the lead generation cost or cost per conversion. It represents how much money you’re spending for every conversion.
If it’s too high, it doesn’t matter whether you have a high conversion rate and a high value per visit. If you don’t track it, your net income might equal to zero or even negative. This happens if you’re spending more than the value of each conversion.
You can improve it by changing your conversion strategies. Some steps you can take include pausing low-converting keywords, adding negative keywords, and choosing the best times to show your ads.
Of course, you need to review all the available data before cutting costs. For example, low-converting keywords may actually have a high conversion rate. Generating only 5 keywords is pretty low, but if it only has 10 clicks, that equates to a 50{83d9acb533c4884914b03d18e206bba7ad1a0dadfc648f48b42e08fbc1fa1e91} conversion rate.
6. Bounce Rate
In the case of bounce rates, the lower, the better. What we call a “bounce” refers to when a visitor navigates away from a webpage without completing any task or clicking on another page. The goal is to have a low bounce rate, which would mean that the visitors are getting what they want when they visit your website.
If a page has a high bounce rate, it may indicate a number of things:
- the landing page has low usability
- the content isn’t relevant to their search
- you haven’t optimised the landing page for conversions
- the page has slow loading times
- the page has a bad design
To figure out what’s wrong, evaluate the landing page and see how you can make improvements. Put yourself into the shoes of a visitor, and see if the visit satisfies you.
You may have to change some on-page elements to make the audience happy. Try refreshing the content as well.
7. Average Session Duration
The value per visit, conversion rate, and bounce rate all tell us that a high traffic doesn’t necessarily equate to more income. Another metric that tells us the same is the average session duration, which represents how long each visitor is staying on each site page.
A high average session duration can indicate that the landing pages are relevant, but when you see that a visitor’s session is too short, that may mean that the content is low quality and not too engaging. Revisit the offending pages and check what might be turning away those visitors.
Note that Google also uses this metric to help determine your PageRank. When your visitor stays, it’s a signal to Google that the page is relevant to the search term, which might improve your rankings.
There’s more to it than aiming for longer durations, though. The visitor may only be staying longer because they’re having a hard time understanding the content, for example. You need to compare the average session duration and interactions per visit side by side to see if you’re good.
8. Interactions per Visit
This metric gives you a look at what your visitors are doing when they land on a page on your website. Do they view a new page, leave a comment, or so on? You’d want a high number of interactions per visit, sure, but you’d also want one of these interactions to convert the visitor.
Tracking their behaviour allows you to figure out how you can influence them into conversions. See which types of content get interactions that lead to conversions, and see how you can change your strategy for the others.
9. Top Pages
Google Analytics lets you see which pages perform best in terms of traffic volume. This should give you an idea of what types of content your audience likes and responds to.
This can then help you decide what to publish next. Publish a post on the same topic, or create another article with the same format.
In addition to traffic volume, you can also view your top pages in terms of social shares. Google Analytics doesn’t provide this information, but you can use other tools like a WordPress plugin or other analytics platforms.
10. Exit Pages
Aside from the top pages, it also helps to know which of the pages in your website are exit pages. These are the ones where your visitors take a leave from your website.
Once you’ve determined the exit pages, see if you can point out why your visitors navigate away at that point. When you figure out at what stage of the conversion process they’re leaving or abandoning their shopping cart, you may be able to make modifications on the process.
The goal is to make the visitors complete the conversion process. If a page or a step is hindering them from doing so, such as a cumbersome checkout procedure, your conversion rate takes a dip.
Improve Your Website Metrics
There are various tools online to help you track website metrics. If you find that your campaigns are not performing as it should, contact us now and let experts handle the digital marketing aspect of your business for you.
For more tips and information, visit our blog, too.