Caught up in a sea of analytics reports? Well, you’re not alone – there’s dozens of website metrics to study and follow when building an online business. And if you’re not careful, you can easily get caught up in analyzing data that won’t have much impact on your bottom line. Not only is this a waste or money, it’s also a huge drain on your enthusiasm and optimism to create a stable, successful business.
Here are a few metrics worth spending time analyzing as these metrics can help you become more successful:
Incoming Traffic
Understanding where traffic comes from can help in the following ways:
- Helps you target specific groups by marketing on sites that help lead visitors to your site
- Reduces overall marketing budget thanks to target marketing (no more placing random ads in the hopes of attracting the right people)
- Helps in the creation of content (blogs, white papers, ebooks, video clips, infographics, etc.) to keep visitors on your site long enough to convince them to make a purchase
- Allows you to gather additional information about markets such as gender, average age, income level, job, and online travels by reviewing websites your visitors are coming from
The more you understand where traffic comes from, the better you can cater to visitors.
Conversion Rates
How often do you make a sale? What’s your average income each month? Which Call to Action results in greater sales? Making a steady income helps you stay in business. Understanding how and why visitors decide to become customers is key to staying in business.
You track conversion rates using:
- Monthly sales (dates, times, amount, and number of sales)
- Email marketing journal – for example, did sales spike when you sent a promotional email to those on your mailing list?
- A/B testing – did sales increase or decrease when testing new landing pages, content, or new products?
- Requests for free materials – ebooks, white papers, brochures, etc.
- Number of email subscribers per month – also include the number that ask to unsubscribe
While knowing how many people visit your website each month gives you a better idea of how popular your site is; it’s the number of sales you make that determines how long you remain in business.
Bounce Rates
Bounce rate refers to rate of single page visits – the number of visitors that left your site after viewing one page. You can easily tell from which pages visitors leave by looking at page views. Making changes to these pages may increase online sales and help plug a major hole in your sales funnel.