Majority of businesses operate online or at least have a website. It’s almost impossible to gain new business without one, right? Because of this, there are more specialized metrics that marketers use to track their online marketing efforts, commonly known as web metrics. With tracking tools such as Google Analytics, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed because there is practically a metric for everything. For any business just starting out, I highly recommend starting small and only focusing on a few key web metrics:
Number of Visitors (also known as Users)
Easily enough, this is the number of people who have visited your site in a given time frame. This is often the first number you see and if you notice big jumps or dips in visitors, you will definitely want to investigate further to find out why.
Bounce Rate
A “bounce” occurs when a user visits your page and immediately exits from it. As you could imagine, having a high bounce rate is bad and indicates a bigger issue regarding the content or issues with sources of traffic on your site. Your bounce rate will never be 0% and the average sits between 40-55%. For my industry (technology, cybersecurity, MSPs) the average sits even higher. So, I suggest finding out what your industry average is and using it as a benchmark.
Conversion Rate
The conversion rate is easily the most important web metric a marketer will track because it tells you the percentage of visitors that actually complete a goal on your website. A goal can be anything from filling out a form, making a purchase, or viewing a particular page on the site. If you have a low conversion rate, it often indicates an issue with the content on your site or a call-to-action (CTA) that is weak and doesn’t appeal to your audience.
Frequent Pages (also known as Pages Report)
I find it helpful to know what pages on your site that visitors find most important. The reason being is because you can determine which pages and posts are more successful and create content based on this information. The goal of any website is to attract and retain users. If you find out what retains your current visitors, then you can create content that attracts new ones.
Starting off with these four web metrics and you’ll definitely be on your way to becoming more comfortable with analytics.
