Your digital marketing campaign needs to include goals. By using key performance indicators to support your strategy, you will be able to quantifiably measure the success of your website. You can look back at the performance data over time to see what improvements have been made, as well as where you still need to improve. An SEO health check audit will keep your team stay aligned and be held accountable. Here are the core key performance indicators that will help you get a more definite picture of what your website is achieving.
Number of Visitors
The visitors of your website are broken into the categories of new and returning. Having new visitors means that your campaign is succeeding at extending its reach, while having returning visitors means your content is engaging and valuable. If you don’t have a high number of returning visitors, create fresh content with more attractive visuals. You may also want to target a better-fitting demographic.
Top Traffic Sources
Where are your visitors coming from? Did they type in your URL, locate you on Google, or see your post come up in their feed on social media? Traffic sources are important key performance indicators to consider because you will be able to act upon those analytics accordingly. Should you notice a significant drop in traffic from, for example, your newsletter, you can put more of your focus into gaining leads there.
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Devices Being Used
You need to optimize your website for all kinds of devices. Regardless of if someone is on desktop or mobile, they should be able to fully experience your site. Before an update goes live, use developer tools to simulate each device to see whether it looks correct. Keeping track of the device source will also help you know which operating systems and browsers are being used.
Session Duration
How long are visitors remaining active on your website? Session duration is a key performance indicator of how engaging your website really is, considering it calculates user activity. By receiving more clicks, this metric will increase. Google Analytics considers 30 minutes of inactive time to be the end of a session. This is helpful because, if someone were to accidentally leave the page open, it won’t skew your numbers.
Average Time on Page
If your site is content-heavy, average time on page can be useful to identify which pages your visitors are hanging out on. For longer blog posts, it would make sense for them to be reading for more time. That being said, if the average time is considerably low on that longer blog post, you know that it isn’t actually getting read. Consider increasing engagement by using multimedia content.
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Interactions Per Visit
You can see the exact element that a visitor has clicked on. This may be a link, form submission, button, or some other interactive element. It will also be evident what action they took, such as if they made a purchase. For e-commerce stores, you can look at the product pages that are visited the most and least. This makes interactions per visit a great key performance indicator to plan your marketing strategy for boosting sales.
Bounce Rate
Your ranking is negatively affected if you have a high bounce rate. This is the number of visitors to your website that leave without interacting, divided by the overall traffic you gained over the course of a specific timespan. A lot of factors go into this calculation, and what is considered a good or bad bounce rate depends on the web page. For instance, if a landing page is intended to drive traffic elsewhere, a high bounce rate isn’t necessarily an issue.
Landing and Exit Pages
While a landing page is where a visitor first enters your site, an exit page is the last place they go before leaving. Landing pages are crucial key performance indicators to analyze because they show why a visitor was interested in your site to begin with. With regard to your exit pages, you will find out whether or not a conversion has been made. Use A/B testing to see what visual and textual elements make people spend the most time on your website.
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Conversion Rate
Why did a certain percentage of visitors not take the action that you wanted them to? For instance, you may be focused on product sales or e-book downloads. Or, technically, the lack thereof sales and downloads. Conversion rate is the most common key performance indicator because everyone wants to know about their direct marketing successes. Determine which visitors have become contacts or customers and what you can do to increase that number.
Customer Satisfaction
While customer satisfaction is difficult to track, it is certainly possible. You just can’t use Google Analytics to find out what people are really thinking about the user experience of your site. Surveys are the best way to directly measure customer satisfaction. Ask what they think about various elements of your web design and whether your products or services have helped them achieve their goals.
Key performance indicators let you clearly see where adjustments need to be made on your website. They will guide you to providing a better user experience and stronger overall content. Are you looking for SEO services that will provide you with the consistent reporting you have been lacking? Contact us at WEBii to get started with a professional team that pays attention to your business and gets you real results.