Websites are necessary tools for businesses. But that’s not all they are. Some websites are works of art, with beautiful, innovative designs and seamless layouts. With websites, however, there’s always more than what meets the eye, which is why it’s crucial to track your website’s behind-the-scenes elements: its data and analytics.
In order to assess the effectiveness of your website, you need to track a variety of “success-metrics,” some of which are more worthy of your time than others.
Check out the following list of metrics you absolutely should be keeping active tabs on.
How Many People Visit Your Site & Where Do They Come From?
The number of visitors your website receives each month is one of the most important metrics to monitor.
Allie Vanden Heuvel of Savvy Panda: “Keep an eye on spikes in traffic or sudden decreases. When you see a big increase you’ll want to know where it came from. And if you see a big drop-off in visitors, you’ll want to figure out how or why it happened as quickly as possible.
Also, take a look at how the visitors are getting to your site: what is the source they are coming in on? Are they finding your site through a Google organic search, from social media channels or from a referral link?”
It’s beneficial to have your incoming traffic arrive from a variety of sources, as each source will produce varying levels of conversion rate success. Consequently, Kissmetrics says, “You should calculate how much each traffic source is converting and deal with them individually.”
You can check your channel-specific metrics under the Acquisitions tab of Google Analytics.
What Is Your Website’s Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate refers to the number of people who leave your site, whether they press the browser back button, type an alternate URL into the search bar, click an external link, or leave by some other means. And what you can learn from this is how well your site retains visitors.
If you look at Google Analytics and discover your bounce rate is higher than you’d like, try one of the following suggestions:
- Avoid clickbait headlines and pagination
- Reduce page loading times
- In your sales copy, add links to information, such as product manuals, how-to guides, and testimonials.
- Throughout your site, link to your social media accounts so if visitors bounce from your site but like you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter, they still may return.
What Are Your Total Conversion Rates?
A conversion can be defined in a variety of ways, such as filling out a form or completing the checkout process, and your total conversion rates “is one of the most important metrics for measuring the profitability of your overall marketing efforts.”
Depending on how your site was built, you may be able to measure your conversion rate success directly from your site. Or, you can also use Google Analytics to set up specific goals and monitor your progress.
What Is Your Lead To Close Ratio?
Your lead to close ratio is used to measure the success rate of your sales.
Jayson DeMers of AudienceBloom: “Without an efficient and successful sales follow-up, any leads you get from marketing could be useless. This metric is easy to define: simply divide your total number of sales by your total number of leads, and you’ll get a ratio that defines your sales success independent of your marketing efforts.
If your close rate is low, any drop in revenue or overspending could merely be a symptom of inefficient final sales strategies.”
What Is Your Rate Of Customer Retention?
Most conventional business models should monitor their customer retention rates, as this metric helps determine the “stickiness” of your products or services as well as whether or not you lack outreach programs. This metric also factors into gauging the average value of your customers, which is beneficial information when it comes to assessing your overall ROI.
The way you measure your customer retention rate is by determining what percentage of your customers are repeat customers, who are also more valuable to your business.
What do you think about this list of important success-metrics? What other data do you measure with your website?