Making sure that your website is not only functioning well but is also driving business growth is important for any business owner. You need to track a key set of metrics to ensure that your business site creates more conversions and engagement.
In this post, I’ll share some metrics that will check the ‘pulse’ of business via events and engagement happening on your site. Doing a weekly or monthly check on these KPIs will give you a good picture of what’s happening on your website.
There are different areas of interest when it comes to measuring your website’s health. Here are the main types of information you need to track:
1. Audience Information
When you learn more about the traffic on your website and why they’re spending time there, you can improve your content and user experience.
Here’s a list of specific information you should track:
- The most common location your visitors are from.
- How many visits did you get on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis?
- What percentage of visitors is unique.
- What are the keywords and key phrases people use to find your website?
- Your user demographics like age group, gender, and other details.
Understanding who your audience is and where they’re from can affect how you create content. For example, the timezone your main audience is in will impact when you publish new posts on your website or send an email blast.
You’ll be able to create more personalized posts that appeal to your market.
To learn more about the people visiting your website, you need to use an analytics tool. Google Analytics is free, but it is challenging to set up.
I recommend using an analytics plugin that will make connecting to your website easy to do. You’ll get all the information you need through reports that get automatically generated regularly.
2. Traffic Sources
In the last section, we mentioned that the user's location is an important metric to know. It’s also critical to understand the means through which users are interacting with your website.
When you have a good analytics plugin, you’ll figure out the devices and ways users are arriving on your site. Here are a few specific sources you should look out for:
- Direct traffic: This type of traffic is where people enter your site URL directly into the search bar to land on your site.
- Organic traffic: When people type in certain keywords on a search engine to reach your website.
- Social media: How much traffic is coming from Facebook, Instagram, or other social media platforms, and which posts or platforms bring you the most traffic.
- Referrals: How many blogs and websites link to your content.
- Email marketing: This is traffic that comes from your email marketing efforts.
- Advertising: Monitoring your paid traffic sources is critical since this can be an expensive activity.
When you know where your traffic is coming from, you’ll be able to optimize your website content for better results.
Knowing how people are finding your website will tell you if your SEO efforts are paying off or whether you have to do more work.
3. Site Speed
Have you ever quit a website that looked promising just because it was slow to load? The chances are high that your potential customers are doing the same thing if they have to wait any longer than 3 seconds for your site to fully appear on their screens.
Measuring your website’s speed is critical. And there are several free online tools that you can use to not only gauge how fast your site loads but also to figure out ways to improve your loading time.
My top tips for improving site speed are to use a caching plugin and work with a top-notch hosting provider. Avoid settling for a low-quality hosting platform if you can. A good hosting service provider won’t just help your website load faster; they’ll also keep your site from getting hacked and save your data.
4. Conversion Rates
I’d argue that the most important metric for your website is your conversion rate. After all, if you aren’t making money, then your business won’t survive.
Having conversion rate metrics will give you a clear-cut idea if your content marketing and other strategies are working.
You need to use your website’s analytics and backend reports to check how the following activities are going on your website:
- The rate at which people sign up for your newsletter via opt-in popups, floating subscription bars, and other similar tools.
- Whether they are clicking on buttons, calls-to-action, and other elements that require action from users.
- How many actually buy your product or service.
- Are people completing your surveys?
- How many are downloading your free ebooks and other content?
- The number of people watching your entire video or video series.
- How many people fill in your forms and hit the submit button?
When you figure out which elements of your website are converting well and which aren’t, you’ll be in a better position to narrow down the areas that need improvement.
5. Search Engine Optimization
One of the most powerful ways to grow your business is to optimize your site to appear as a top result for specific keywords.
When your website reaches the top three places for relevant terms, you get more traffic, more engagement, and more conversions.
Here are the main SEO elements you should track concerning your website:
- The main keywords and phrases people are using that overlap with what your business does.
- The number of websites linking to your business site.
- The quality of your backlinks. Getting backlinks from a spammy website will likely have a negative impact on your business.
- Organic bounce rate or how many people leave your website as soon as they land on it.
- The most viewed pages on your site.
It’s important to have a specialist in your organization who can look after the SEO aspect of your business on a full-time basis. If you’re a smaller company, consider using an SEO tool that helps automate different SEO tasks.
Wrapping Up
Help your business grow with the right metrics!
The success of your business depends on how your website performs. And if you want to have a true understanding of whether your website is as good as it can be, it’s important to track certain metrics.
In this post, I’ve shared some of the top metrics you need to cover to gauge your website's health. Use this as a guide and also figure out unique KPIs that work for your own business. As you track your work over the long term, you’ll be able to make necessary changes and grow your business successfully.